


The Pirate Boy

by pxncey



Category: Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Alternative Universe: Pirates, F/M, Historical Inaccuracy, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Suicide Attempt, Trans Female Character, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 16:22:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 45,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4398971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pxncey/pseuds/pxncey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."</p><p>When notorious pirate (and total asshole) Gerard Way snatches young, innocent Frank Iero from his tidy, planned-out life and deposits him on the infamous pirate ship, The Black Freighter, he is immersed in a world of deception, violence and sin. The thing is, though, he knows from the start that it won't be the fighting that destroys him-- it will be the loathing he and Gerard feel for each other that will tear him apart in the end.</p><p>[NOT FINISHED, SORRY]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pirate Boy

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."

\----

I was sixteen when he took me. Just sixteen years old.

People would ask me, years later, if I ever missed my old life, but I could never answer. I had been engaged to Lady Emily, my father had been hopeful that I would be granted a place in the King’s navy, and my education had only just finished. My old life hadn’t even begun before it was over.

I remember the night it happened. Vividly. It was the night I came alive. The stars were bright, and the evening air was crisp and cool. His silhouette was clear against the backdrop of the glowing town. Clearer still as he climbed up my balcony. I watched in a strange mix of morbid fascination and consuming terror as he took a step closer to my window.

His heavy coat seemed to do nothing to weigh down his strong form, and the charcoal under his eyes and sword on his belt added to the vicious persona the man carried. The word was on my tongue from the moment I saw him. Clinging to the inside of my mouth, too scared to come out.

Pirate.

It was like a curse word. Everyone feared the pirates. The town had tried to push down their mass fear and pretend that each attack hadn’t happened, but there was no hiding it. It was a plague on our village.

My stomach was twisting and my breath was catching as he slowly turned the latch of my door. I clutched at my sheets and stared, frozen, as the door pushed open with ease. His walk was cocky, far too confident, and he crossed the room to my bed with a dirty smile on his face and his fingers brushing the pistol tucked into his belt. “Hey, sleeping beauty,” he drawled. He paused, glancing me over, then nodded down at me expectantly.

I blinked in confusion. Since everyone was so secretive about the pirate attacks and kidnappings, I wasn’t quite sure what the protocol was.

The man raised the gun and cocked it. “Get up, darlin’.”

Oh.

Shaking, I pulled myself up. The man hummed appreciatively, his stringy black hair falling over his eyes as he glanced down to slip his gun back into its holster. “Good boy,” he said, in an almost coquettish tone. I flinched. He was a man. What on earth was he doing? “Now,” he said darkly. “You’re going to follow me, and you’re not going to run away or make a sound, or you’ll end up where that little Lucy Cooper did. Got it?”

Lucy Cooper was the poor young girl found dead in the town centre just weeks ago, with two bullet holes in her head. We all knew who had done it. We all pretended it hadn’t happened. I didn’t want to be another case swept under the rug, so I nodded.

The man opened my drawer and grabbed a handful of whatever valuables he could find. With the gold safe in his hands, he started walking briskly down the hall, in the opposite direction of the balcony, and I followed like a little sheep, confused but in no state to question his plans. We reached the landing, and the man pulled out his gun with a sly smirk, then shot the chandelier clean off its hanging. It shattered to the floor with the shriek of breaking glass, and the remaining dim candlelight shot our reflections in all directions across the room in the fractured crystal. The pirate laughed and grabbed my wrist, tugging me with him as he climbed up onto the banister, and– to my horror– leaped down to the floor. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. I screamed. A hand clamped over my mouth. There was a crash, a splitting pain in my ankle, and arms wrapping tightly around me in a second.

I whimpered and tried to clutch at my ankle, but the man’s grip was too tight on me. “Now,” he breathed, his lips brushing my ear. I shivered. “I’ll forgive that little scream of yours, because it was just damned rude of me to jump off there without warnin’. But any more noise and you’ll be gettin’ it, savvy?”

I nodded shakily, and he pulled me with him across the hallway. I tried to walk, but every step hurt my ankle. The man tugged, but I didn’t follow.

“You got a deathwish, pretty boy?” he hissed.

“N-no,” I said in a small voice.

“Then hurry the fuck up!”

“I– y-you hurt my ankle,” I stuttered. “I can’t walk.”

He rolled his eyes. “Legs as strong as a whore, this one,” he muttered sarcastically. He furrowed his brow in frustration. The sound of the staff bustling around, woken from the noise, drifted into the hallway, and my heart jumped with the hope of rescue. “Motherfuck,” the pirate mumbled. “You and your stupid ankle.”

“It’s not my fault,” I argued, rubbing my injured ankle. “You didn’t have to jump off the bloody balcony just for show.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Don’t you sass me,” he snapped.

“You get what you fucking pay for,” I bit back, gaining confidence. “Or what you don’t pay for, in this case.”

He glared at me, seething for a few moments, and then lunged, grabbing me and hoisting me up into his arms in one swift movement. It was a massive achievement that I managed to keep from squealing. “It’s fuckin’ lucky for you that you’re a pretty one,” he growled. “Cos I’d have blown your brains out if it weren’t for that.”

He started to walk again, dragged down by my weight, and I suddenly noticed that he had dropped all the jewels he’d collected before in order to carry me. “You dropped all the gold,” I pointed out, hoping that by the time he had turned around to collect the money, the staff would have come to help me.

But the pirate just ignored me and carried on walking.

“The gold,” I repeated. “Don’t you want to go and get it?”

“You’re more valuable than all of that,” he said darkly, and I shuddered.

Nausea flooded over me as I realised my fate. My mind raced over the options of my future. I was going to be used as currency, to be handed around by grubby fingers. I was going to be sold as a slave and be worked to death. Or worse, as a whore, for dirty bastards like the man who’d taken me.

I wanted to cry. It was taking all my strength not to. My eyes were pricking with tears and I felt weak and pathetic. I don’t know what my father had been thinking, putting me in the navy. I wasn’t a man. I was still a boy.

I buried my face in the man’s coat to hide my face, squeezing my eyes shut and trying to ignore the smell of tobacco and rum woven deep into the fabric. I don’t know how long he carried me for. I don’t know how far we walked. I was tired and distressed and too scared to open my eyes, and I think I fell asleep.

When I woke up, my hands were cold from being bound tightly behind my back, and I was slumped on the floor, tied to a table leg. There was a weird, uncomfortable sense of movement about the whole room, and the muffled sound of waves lapping against a solid surface, and I guessed that I was probably on a ship.

A pirate ship. Holy shit.

Fear filled me, and my chest tightened as I heard the sound of metal soled shoes clicking on a hardwood floor. The footsteps were evenly spaced, heavy, confident. My stomach twisted into a knot and I struggled desperately against the bonds around my wrists and middle. But my attempts were futile. I slumped back against the table leg miserably.

A door swung open behind me and then slammed swiftly shut. The heavy footsteps slowed, and neared me. My eyes were fixed on the floor as the shadow of a man entered my vision. He took a step closer, and paused. I could feel his eyes burning into me.

He nudged at me with his foot, trying to get me to look up. “Why so shy, sweetheart?” His voice was deep and throaty, much tougher and less of a feminine drawl than the pirate who’d taken me here.

“I’m not shy,” I muttered.

“Then brave my hideous face and look up, kiddo,” the man said gruffly.

I glared at him, and he looked almost taken aback for a second, but his sea blue eyes soon returned to cold and shallow. The man was blonde, and his clothing looked richer and better made than that of the first pirate I’d seen. By the permanent sneer on his face and three swords fastened in the holsters on his belt, I made a guess that he was the captain.

“Captain Bryar,” he said, nodding at me courteously.

I raised an eyebrow at the sudden politeness. “Frank,” I said in turn.

“Well, ‘Frank’,” the captain said. “Welcome aboard the Black Freighter.”

I scoffed. “Some welcome.”

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry, but the whole atmosphere just doesn’t feel very friendly to me.”

The captain furrowed his brow, looking almost offended.

I stared at him. “I’m tied to a table leg.”

“That was just to stop you running away while the ship was in port.” He pulled out a dagger and cut away the bindings, and I struggled loose then stood up.

The captain glanced me over, his eyes dragging up and down my form, and I shuffled back a step, uncomfortable under his gaze. “Why exactly am I here?” I demanded, using the confidence I had while I still had it.

“Oh, we just needed an extra pair of hands to help around the ship,” the captain said nonchalantly.

“Why me?” I asked. “Why get someone to traipse all the way across town to my house when you could have easily taken someone from one of the homes along the coast, no fuss?”

Captain Bryar paused. “Well, we heard–”

We were abruptly interrupted as the door crashed open. “Captain!” a man yelled, skidding into the room. His brown curls were tangled and dry from the ocean air, and his frayed clothes spoke of a laborious position on the ship. “Captain, it’s– it’s the Aurora!”

The captain’s eyes darkened, and his fingers automatically ghosted over the pistol on his belt. “All hands on deck,” he roared, suddenly fearsome and aggressive.

“And the kid?” the curly haired man asked, nodding in my direction.

“Stick the girl in here with him to keep him company.”

‘The girl’. My stomach churned at his words. I desperately hoped that this girl wasn’t some concubine planning to rape me. I was small and terrified, and I knew I would be an easy target.

“Don’t be scared, kiddo,” the captain said. “We’ll make it like a nice wet dream for ya.”

I shuddered. To be honest, I rarely found women attractive. I had a feeling it was going to be more like a wet nightmare.

“Knock him out, will you, Toro?”

My eyes widened and I stumbled backwards. “N-no, you don’t have to do that.”

The man with the curly hair shook his head. “Trust me, kid. You won’t wanna witness the Aurora." The man smiled kindly, as if rendering me unconscious was a friendly gesture, then raised his fist.

Then there was nothing.

\----

The nothing lasted a long while. It took some time, but soon the blackness began to dissolve into blurry colours, and the silence was broken by a ringing in my ears. I groaned and tried to force my eyes open to no avail. I tried to piece together where I was and what had happened.

Shrieks of ‘Fire!’ and furious yells penetrated my ears, and the sound of swords clashing told me all I needed to know. Everything came back to me. Pirates. Yeah.

A cannon blew, resurfacing the blinding ringing in my ears again, and a little squeak came from the corner of the room. I opened my eyes (to great success this time) and glanced around. I appeared to be alone in the dining room. I clutched at the side of the table and hauled myself up. That’s when I caught sight of her. A young girl– no older than me– was shivering and cowering in the corner of the room underneath a shelf, hugging her knees and hiding behind her hair.

She didn’t look much like a hooker, so I approached her.

“Are you alright, miss?” I asked.

“Thank you for your kindness,” she said, her voice wavering. “As much as I would like to say that I am alright, I must be truthful and tell you that I am most certainly not.”

“I’m sorry.”

She waved a hand feebly. “It isn’t your fault.” She paused. “That is, presuming you aren’t one of them.”

“One of who?” I asked dumbly.

“The pirates. Outside on the deck, pillaging and screaming and murdering their fellow sailor.”

I shook my head. “No. I’m kind of– well, I’m a prisoner, I suppose.”

She smiled a little and sighed tiredly. “Me too.”

“Frank Iero,” I said, extending a hand.

“Jamia,” she said softly, shaking my hand.

“So,” I said. “What’s the Aurora? It sounded quite dramatic.”

“It’s another ship, from what I’ve gathered,” she said. “One they seem to hate with everything they’ve got.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Don’t know. They just have a grudge against them. They’re never this vicious with other pirates. Only the crew of the Aurora.”

“Pirates are strange creatures,” I murmured.

“Agreed.”

A crashing and the sound of breaking glass reverberated through the room and I tensed. Neither Jamia nor I dared to move. There were two men fighting in the room with us, one with his hands wrapped around the other’s throat. Blood smearing from his hands to the other man’s neck from where he had broken the glass in the door.

I recognised the man with the bleeding hands as the one who had taken me from my home, and the loathing I felt for him was quick to take over my whole body. I silently wished that he would be killed by the opposing pirate, but things weren’t looking hopeful. He growled and shoved the other man up against the wall by his throat, and I covered my eyes, starting to feel nauseous.

I heard the ring of a sword being pulled from a holster, and I held my breath. There was a pause, then a sickening squelching sound, then a horrific crunching. Jamia buried her face in my shoulder. My kidnapper laughed softly. “Love a good kill with a sword,” he mused. There was that horrible squelching sound again as the sword was pulled out, and a thud as the body slumped to the floor, and I glanced up just in time to see my kidnapper sliding his bloody weapon back into its place on his belt. “It’s so much more intimate than a gun,” he murmured, slowly making his way across the room towards us. His eyes locked with mine, and I froze. “How’s it going, pretty boy?” he teased.

I shrugged. “Could be better,” I said, masking the shake in my voice with overconfidence. “I’m stuck on a ship full of maniacs who are too busy killing other maniacs to tell me what’s going on. It’s a little annoying.”

“Aw, I’m sorry, sweetie. I’d love to spare you a minute, but this is a pretty high priority job. Guess I’d better be going. Au revoir!” He skipped over the limp corpse on the floor and slipped back outside, and within a second he was poised to jump on yet another opponent.

Jamia stared at me. “Why was he… like that?”

I grimaced. “I don’t know. None of the others speak to me like that.”

“He’s treating you like some common whore.”

“Oh gosh,” I mumbled. “What if that’s why I’m here?”

Jamia patted my shoulder kindly. “Then you’ll just have to brave it, I suppose.” She pulled me into a sympathetic hug, rubbing my back comfortingly. “You could always kill yourself,” she mumbled against my shoulder.

I snorted. “Yes, I suppose. Silver lining,” I laughed.

Jamia laughed too. We stayed there for the rest of the night, huddled in the corner whispering to each other as the pirates battled outside. This whole ordeal was quite hellish, but I must admit, I felt lucky to have a friend.

\----

“There is such disassociation between what the eyes see and what the mind envisions. The final thought it just a matter of interpretation, coloured by our experiences.”

\----

“Up!” A gruff yell woke me from my sleep. I groaned unhappily. “Up, you hideous, underdeveloped maggots!”

I stretched, and winced. I had a crick in my neck and all of my muscles were stiff. Jamia didn’t look particularly comfortable either; she was rubbing the back of her neck with a grimace on her face, and the hollowness of her cheeks suggested a lack of sleep too.

“Our little chance encounter with the Aurora means there’s work to be done! Get your scrawny bags of bones out of your beds. All hands on fucking deck!”

The sound of metal soled shoes on hardwood floor reverberated off the walls, and it was only a moment before Captain Bryar was stood before us, dressed in full attire; heavy coat, cutlass, hat and all. “You two,” he said roughly, “are to come with me.” He turned on his heel and marched away, and we followed meekly. I had to limp because of my ankle, but Jamia helped me along.

“It’s a sad day when we pick up a couple of slaves for ourselves and they get attached to each other,” he mused as he led us across the ship. “It’s a shame one of yer’s gonna get sold.”

Sold. The word horrified me. I felt like my body had frozen and my heart had stopped beating. I was going to lose Jamia. Sure, we had only known each other a day, but she was the only person I felt like I could trust on this ship. She was my only friend here. If she was sold, then I’d be stranded here with the pirates, alone without a sane soul in miles. Oh gosh, and even worse, if I was sold, poor Jamia would be stuck here with these sociopathic maniacs. What if they hurt her? What if they raped her? Oh, Jesus. At least if she was sold to some family as a maid then she’d be treated right, and she might have some chance of escape.

“I’ll stay on the ship,” I said immediately.

“Oh yes, that was the plan,” Captain Bryar said.

I slowed down. “I’m sorry?”

He waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, nothing. Stump?” he called.

A short blonde boy appeared in front of us. “Yes, sir?”

The captain clamped a hand on Jamia’s shoulder. She didn’t squirm but she didn’t look too happy either. “Get ready to take this one and the prisoners from the Aurora out to be sold. Prep ‘em. Make sure they look presentable; we run a fair trade.”

I snorted incredulously. “You’re pirates.”

“Pirates can trade fair, thank you very much,” the captain said. “I’ll have you know, our crew is very polite and reasonable.”

“Yes, the man who kidnapped me was ever so polite,” I said sarcastically. “It isn’t at all like he sprained my ankle or threatened to kill me several times in the space of five minutes.”

“Oh, that’s just cos he likes you,” the blonde boy scoffed.

“He– what?”

“Stump,” the captain reprimanded, giving the shorter man a gentle shove. “That’s quite enough.”

“Sorry,” Stump muttered. “You know it’s true though.”

Captain Bryar shook his head. “What Gerard gets up to in his spare time is nothing to do with–”

“But you always end up getting dragged into it, don’t you? Captain, he’s delusional. You should just sell this one with the girl. Prevent any more trouble.”

“I said, that’s enough out of you, Patrick. I trust Gerard’s judgement, and you should too.”

“Last time I trusted Way’s judgement, I nearly died,” Patrick muttered irritatedly.

The captain sighed in exasperation and gently pushed Jamia in Patrick’s direction. “Just go prep her with the prisoners.” He turned to me. I winced at the intimidating look on his face. “You’re coming with me,” he told me.

“Where are we going?” I asked as he started to drag me along the deck.

“Clothes shopping,” he muttered.

\----

An hour later, I was sat on a lumpy bunk in a room with a man I’d never seen before, wearing what I could only assume was a burlap sack. The captain had taken my clothes in order to sell them, and all that I’d been given to wear instead was this coarse, scratchy poncho. Or converted potato sack. There was no telling. All I knew was that I felt like an idiot, and I didn’t doubt that I looked like one too.

“Ah, the old burlap,” said the man on the other bed, having just finished downing an entire bottle of rum. I wondered how he hadn’t gone blind. “I remember when that was all I had to wear. It’s tough being the new kid, buddy.” He patted my shoulder.

I was impressed by his unwavering ability to talk and move even after starting on another bottle of liquor. Holding alcohol well must just be a skill one picks up easily when living with pirates.

“I’m James,” the man introduced himself. “Everyone just calls me Dewees.”

“Well,” I said, “I’m rather accustomed to calling people by their first names if they’re not in a position of authority. Hello, James. I’m Frank.”

“Woah, posh knob, much? Lemme guess. Son of a duke? Son of a count?”

“Son of the King’s advisor,” I mumbled.

“Bloody hell. Nice. How’d you wind up here?”

“Kidnapped.”

“Oh. Sorry about that. S’pose you’ll have lost a pretty good outfit then.”

“No,” I said. “The captain seemed to think it would be worth a lot, but I seriously doubt that. It was my nightgown.”

Dewees snorted. “Yeah, the captain does tend to think he’s a bit higher and wiser than he really is.”

“So, um,” I said. “I could really do with some real clothes. I think this thing is giving me a rash.” I squirmed and adjusted the potato sack.

“Oh, you can just have some of my clothes,” James offered brightly. “I’ve got two of nearly everything, it should work out fine.”

\----

It did not work out fine.

I had everything except for pants.

“Well, at least you’ve got most of a nice outfit,” James said cheerily.

“I can’t go out like this. I cannot work on a ship, with the sea spraying at me, in freezing cold weather with nothing to cover my legs. I just can’t. Not to mention the fact that it’s just plain indecent.”

“But nobody cares when you’re out at sea,” James said. “That’s what I love about it. Nobody cares. You can marry a mouse, you can drink till you think you’re the Loch Ness Monster, and still, nobody will give a damn.”

“Well, I was brought up knowing that it is right to give a damn if a man is engaging in bestiality and gluttony. But I appreciate that you enjoy the freedom.”

James nodded slowly. “Right.”

“Now can you please find me some pants?”

“I’m sure Gerard will have some spare. Go ask him.”

I grimaced. “The man who took me from my house and forced me onto this godforsaken ship?”

James paused, then smiled brightly. “The very same.”

I glared at him.

“What? He always has a strange abundance of pants. Oh, but be warned. They might be a little tight.”

\----

“A dame that knows the ropes isn’t likely to get tied up.”

\----

We were due to reach port in only a few hours, and I hadn’t spoken to Jamia yet. I wanted to say goodbye to her, but I had no idea where she was or if I would even be allowed to speak to her. I doubted it. And unfortunately, the new pants that had been given to me by a rather amused Gerard made any type of sneaking around– and in fact, walking– extremely impractical.

“How on earth do you move in these?” I had asked him, straining to bend my knee.

He simply replied that it was an art, a skill that people were born with, and I just didn’t seem to possess it. He then proceeded to demonstrate his great dexterity in the area by kicking a leg up then swiftly dropping to his knees with a superior smirk on his face. “Sorry, honey,” he had drawled, “but it just ain’t something that can be taught. Savvy?”

I decided to try to avoid communication with him at all costs after that.

Of course, it was just fate that he was the one who had been assigned the job of guarding the key to the prisoners’ cell. For some absurd reason, Jamia had been deposited in the cargo hold with the pirates from the Aurora, while the captain seemed to have the intention of integrating me into the ship’s routine and turning me into a fellow crew member. It was strange logic, since I had no discernible talents whatsoever and despised pirates, but I didn’t question it. If I was staying alive and Jamia was getting out of here safely, I didn’t have a problem.

And besides, after some thought, I didn’t really have a reason to go home. I would be wed to Emily, I would become a naval officer, and that would be my life. At least there was a possibility of an interesting life if I stayed on this ship. So, I decided, I didn’t have a problem with staying.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. I did have just one very tiny problem. In order to get the key to the cell Jamia was being held in, I would have to talk to Gerard. I didn’t want to have to talk to that damned conceited idiot again. I supposed I could just try and break into the cell.

I recalled back to my time at home. A number of times, a rogue maid had tried to pick my lock while I was sleeping in order to take the gold from my dresser. Of course, they’d all failed and been caught by one of the higher servants rather quickly, but this was a pirate ship. Breaking and entering was normal behaviour for these people. I was certain no one would even bat an eyelid.

Oh, how wrong I was. Five minutes later, I was tied to a table leg again.

And not with rope. With one Gerard Way’s tie.

Gerard sighed. “Frankie, Frankie, Frankie. Did you really think you could get past me?”

“Yes,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Why else would I have tried?”

“Look, kid,” he said indignantly. “I’m the guy they send to pick the locks. I know how to break into a place, and I know how to make sure that you can’t break into a place. There’s a reason I’ve got the key.”

“Wow. So doing high kicks in obscenely tight pants isn’t your only talent?”

Gerard shot me a look. “If you’re gonna be a smartass then I’m not going to help you.”

I frowned. “You were going to help me?”

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “You’re part of the crew now, if not in the lowest position on the ship. I’m first mate. I ought to be sharing my wisdom with you.”

“Wisdom,” I snorted. “Ostentatious overconfidence, more like.”

“Excuse me?” he said incredulously. “Do you want my fucking help or not? Cos if you’re going to keep bitching at me then I won’t help you find your little girlfriend, savvy?”

I decided to take the girlfriend remark as a compliment, and nodded. “Uh, savvy?” I repeated tentatively, hoping that I was using the word correctly.

“Good.”

“So you’re going to give me the keys?” I asked hopefully.

“Hell, no. I’m gonna teach you how to pick a lock.”

“Does it have to be you that teaches me?”

“Sorry?”

“I’m not at all opposed to learning to pick a lock if it’s going to be of use to me later in life, but I would much prefer it if James was the one to teach me.”

Gerard looked a little offended. “Why?”

“How do I put this nicely?” I mumbled. There wasn’t a really any way to go about it but just flat out saying it. I sighed. “You’re delusional and weird, and I hate to say it, but I’d rather favour spending my time with someone sane.”

Gerard’s expression hardened, and he turned on his heel and marched off.

“No! Gerard, wait!” I called out.

He paused. He took a few steps back into the room. “What?” he asked carefully.

I squirmed and strained to pull my wrists from their bindings, but the tie remained knotted. “Would you do me a favour and untie me before you go?”

He snarled and stormed off, hissing ‘bitch’ under his breath as he disappeared from sight. Damn it. I should have sucked up to the bastard when I had the chance. I’d just lost my best hope of seeing Jamia again.

\----

I wasn’t sure whether to take it as a good thing or a bad thing when I heard men screaming about how the prisoners had escaped and we were under attack.

This would give me an opportunity to see Jamia, but it would also open up the possibility of me getting stabbed to death by another crazed pirate. I wasn’t a brilliant fighter as it was, and I was currently tied to a chair leg, so my chances of survival if someone did choose to pick me as a target looked discouragingly low.

The thumps of men jumping from ship to ship disturbed the boat’s balance and the sound of crazed screeching soaked through the floor of the deck, increasing in volume and crushing me under the weight of the sound. I was fucking scared now. I pulled at the tie and squirmed and kicked at the table but I was still trapped.

Now I was really starting to wish I’d sucked up to Gerard.

“Gerard,” I called desperately, hoping that he was still down below the deck. “I’m sorry! P-please come back.”

There was no response.

I tried James instead. “James! Um, D-Dewees?”

“Frank?” he called back in confusion. I couldn’t tell where his voice was coming from. “What do you want? We need to go up and help with the mess.”

“Yeah. Yes, of course. But– could you– maybe please, um, untie me first?”

“Where the hell are you?”

“I’m down by the prisoners’ room.”

“You’re not in with the prisoners, are you?”

“No. I’m just. I’m tied up outside.”

I heard a distant sigh, followed by footsteps, and soon James materialised out of the dank corridor, a rather bemused expression on his face and a dagger tucked under his belt. He stopped a few feet away from me and stared at me for a while, his head tilted a little to the side and a furrow in his brow. He paused before speaking. “Is that Gerard’s tie?”

“Yes!” Gerard’s voice was muted through the walls of his room, but it was distinctly him.

“Gerard, pray tell,” James called. “What exactly possessed you to tie your fellow crew member to a table with your tie?”

“He was being a little bitch,” Gerard huffed.

“I thought you liked Frank. You were the one who asked us to keep him. What happened?”

“He turned out to be a little bitch!”

“Real nice vocabulary you got there,” I said dryly.

“Smartass,” Gerard snapped back.

“Oh, give it up. You’re just a narcissistic little paramecium.”

“I don’t know what the fuck a paramecium is, but I can tell from your perfectly self satisfied tone of voice that I’m not one!” he hissed.

“I can’t believe you, you’re acting like children,” James said incredulously. “Just break it up. There are people actually fighting up there,” he nodded up at the ship’s deck, “and you guys are just bitching at each other? Real mature.”

“I’m sorry, I’m normally a lot more rational,” I insisted. “I’m just currently tied to a table leg.”

“Oh, for god’s sake.” James knelt down at my side and pulled his dagger out to cut the knot.

“You better not be cutting my tie,” Gerard yelled. There was a muffled crashing sound from his room, and within a few seconds he had hurried over to us. He pushed James out of the way. “Nobody damages my tie,” he said in a low voice. He dropped to his knees and started work on untying me, very carefully and methodically.

“Yeah, god forbid someone hurts the tie,” James said sarcastically. “But when your crew’s out there getting killed then it’s fine to hide in your room.”

Gerard glared at James for a moment, then dropped his head down again to carry on working through the knot. His stringy black hair fell over his eyes, and even though shaking it away seemed to have almost no effect, his focus stayed on the tie.

After what must have been a few minutes work, Gerard snatched the tie away. My arms were finally free, and I pulled myself to my feet and stretched, rubbing at my wrists gratuitously as if they were sore in an attempt to guilt Gerard. The tie had actually been really soft and didn’t even leave marks, but I was intent on making him feel bad.

“There you go, you got your tie back unharmed,” James said. “Happy?”

“Yeah,” Gerard mumbled huffily.

“Can we go help the rest of the crew now?”

Gerard rolled his eyes. “Yes.”

I had no idea how to fight or if I was even expected to, but I supposed that if I was going to live on this ship I was going to have to learn at some point. I grabbed a spare candlestick from the table and followed Gerard and James to the stairs.

“If that tie’s so special to you, why’d you use it to tie Frank up, anyway?” James asked as we walked.

“I was annoyed in the moment, it was all I had on me,” Gerard muttered.

James was going to question more, but then he caught sight of the candlestick in my hand. He stopped. “Frank, are you actually going to attempt to fight fully armed, deranged pirates with a candlestick?”

“Um,” I said tentatively. “Yes?”

He stared at me with a rather discouraging expression of half disbelief and half utter pity.

“That was the wrong answer, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, man,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re gonna need a whole lot of training.”

\----

“Those who hate most fervently must have once loved deeply; those who want to deny the world must have once embraced what they now set on fire.”

\----

I think I was expected to feel disappointed about missing the fight, judging by the sympathetic pat on the back I received from James after being told I had to stay below deck.

I assumed then that James must have blindly overlooked the fact that this would give me the perfect opportunity to break into the cell without Gerard in the way. I had already made it into his room, no fuss. He had left the door unlocked when he went running to save his tie. Now all I had to do was find the key and I was all set. And by give of the frenzied screaming I could hear from upstairs, the fighting wasn’t anywhere near over yet, and I would have plenty of time to rifle through Gerard’s personal possessions.

To be honest, I was rather unimpressed with what I found. For a pirate, Gerard didn’t have very much gold. Or really anything of value at all, for that matter. There were a few charcoal sketches of miscellaneous objects littered over his desk, a small footlocker underneath his bed (along with a stash of rum that could probably last several years), and a wardrobe of rather typical pirate clothes. The footlocker was bolted shut, and I couldn’t think of anywhere he could be hiding the key for that, let alone something as important as the key for the cargo hold.

I traipsed back to the table I had previously been tied to and slumped into a chair, disheartened. Gerard must be carrying the key on him. I wondered if it was too late to beg him. I really wanted to say goodbye to Jamia.

Luckily for me, though, I didn’t have to talk to Gerard again in order to gain access to the cell.

The fight upstairs started to spill down below when one of the enemy men crashed through a weak floorboard and had to smash half the floor with the handle of his knife to get down. A short blonde I recognised as Stump quickly jumped down after him, shrieking and wielding a bent sword.

The opposing pirate crashed through the door of the cargo hold, probably looking for escape (or just another route back up to the deck), leaving the door open for the prisoners to hurriedly scuttle out in a messy stream, like rats fleeing a flooded sewer.

I scanned the small crowd for Jamia, but couldn’t find her anywhere. “Jamia?” I called apprehensively, hoping that the enemy pirate was too busy defending himself from a crazed Patrick to notice me.

But I should have been more worried for Jamia than I was for myself. I should have tried to protect her. Because only seconds later, I heard a terrified scream, and the sickeningly familiar squelch and crunch of a dagger in someone’s ribs.

\----

Patrick was quick to finish the attacker off after that, dropping his sword, then swiftly snapping the enemy’s neck and kicking his body into the corner so he could check Jamia over. Shaking with fear, I hurried into the room after Patrick.

A knife was plunged into her chest at an angle, expertly aimed to pierce her heart. A dark mass of blood soaked through her shirt, smudging onto Patrick’s hands. Her body looked cracked and wrong, limp in Patrick’s arms, and half a fractured rib jutted out of her chest, splitting her bloody skin. Her eyes were still open, and damp tear tracks stained her face.

Fury clouded my mind, and a cold sickly feeling spread through my veins. Shaking, I opened my mouth to ask Patrick who the killer was, then promptly vomited all over the floor.

\----

I stared at the wall.

I found myself incapable of doing anything else.

I couldn’t process what had just happened. Jamia was dead. She was stabbed. She was dead. The hope that she would be able to have a relatively good life as a servant had been crushed. All hope and light inside me had been put out.

I pulled my knees up to my chest and sighed shakily. I was sat on Gerard’s bed. Patrick had ushered me in here with the nice man with the curly hair who had knocked me out the night the Aurora came, then locked the door for safety. I hoped that it was to keep the fights out, rather than to keep me in.

“I’m Ray, in case you were wondering,” the curly haired man said quietly, breaking the silence. Those were the first words spoken in about half an hour.

“I wasn’t,” I muttered. “But thanks,” I added, realising that I must have sounded rude.

“I’m really sorry about that girl,” he said. “You two were friends, weren’t you?”

“Barely,” I mumbled. “Well. I suppose. She just made the night when the Aurora came less of a nightmare.” I leaned back against the wall with a miserable sigh. “And she wasn’t just some girl. Her name was Jamia.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

There was silence again after that. I rested my head against the cool surface of the wall and closed my eyes. I tried to sleep. I tried to think about anything but Jamia. But all I could see was her dead eyes. The sheen of sweat on her white skin. The knife twisted in her ribs.

“You know,” Ray said, shattering the silence. My eyes snapped open. “I’m really not the best person to talk to about this.”

“We haven’t talked at all,” I muttered.

“Yeah. Not the best. I was just going to suggest– I’m sure Gerard would be a lot more understanding about this kind of thing.”

I scoffed. “That delusional freak?”

Ray looked up at me sadly. “His brother was killed by the Aurora when he was six. He’s been kind of messed up since.”

I froze. Something clicked inside my head. “Oh,” I said almost inaudibly. “I didn’t know.”

“Don’t call Gerard out on being the way he is,” Ray said quietly. “He has his reasons.”

I sighed softly. “We all do.”

\----

Ray had left hours ago. I was still curled up on Gerard’s bed, head rested limply against the wall, focused only on the image of Jamia’s dead body burned into my eyelids when Gerard came in to go to sleep.

“You still here?” he asked. I could tell he was making an effort to keep the harshness out of his voice.

I opened my eyes briefly. “No,” I said softly. My intention was to sound sarcastic, but my voice just came out as a weak whisper. My eyes fluttered shut again. I was fucking drained.

Gerard dithered. “Look– do you wanna sleep here tonight?”

“What?” I slurred.

“I don’t wanna move you,” he mumbled. He sounded conflicted. “I mean.” He coughed. “You look heavy.”

I was too out of it to even mumble a sarcastic ‘thanks’. I pulled my legs closer to my chest and mumbled a weird unintelligible sound into my knees.

“You can just,” Gerard stuttered. “You sleep here. I’ll go.”

He turned to go. I stopped him.

“Where’s your blanket?” I grumbled.

“Oh,” he murmured. “I keep it in the drawer. People steal your blankets if you leave ‘em out, you know.”

“Bitchy.”

“You bet.” He pulled a folded up quilt out from his drawer and shook it out. “Mind you, they do quit complaining about the cold once they’ve taken ‘em, but then you’re left with a quiet ship and a chilly bed.”

“Hmm.”

Gerard draped the blanket over me and I curled up underneath it, sliding down from resting against the wall, and choosing instead to lean on the pillow. It smelled familiar. Tobacco and rum worn into clean cotton fabric. It was an oddly sweet smell, but not cloying. I nuzzled into the pillow and sighed.

Sinking into the depths of sleep, I barely noticed Gerard straightening out the quilt to cover my cold feet. I was scarcely conscious, and reality was starting to blur with dreams, but I could have sworn I felt a hand ghosting over my hair as I drifted off.

\----

“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”

\----

Waking up in unfamiliar places seemed to be becoming a habit of mine. Thankfully, it didn’t take me long to remember why I was in Gerard’s bedroom.

It did, however, take me a while to work out where the fuck Gerard was. A little part of me wondered if he had slept in here with me and got up early, but I dismissed the thought as ridiculous. The bed was only just wide enough for me to lie on, and I wasn’t exactly the largest of people. He must have slept in my room.

The sun was high in the sky and it was busy up on deck, so I assumed that he had already got up. I was left a little confused when I didn’t see him around the ship. I headed back down below deck with the intention of thanking him for yesterday, but he wasn’t at the table eating breakfast (stale biscuits and rum) with Patrick like I expected, nor was he hanging about in my room with James. In fact, James was nowhere to be seen either.

The two of them turned out to be down in the cargo hold, having a quiet argument about something. Gerard looked pretty pissed, but he was still talking in a low voice, like the two men were in a dispute over a topic they didn’t want the whole crew to become privy to.

Naturally, I listened in.

It wasn’t often I heard people talking about me in secret, so I didn’t really know how to react when I heard my name. I silently took a few steps closer and pressed my back against the wall to stay out of sight.

“Gerard, you can’t be serious,” James said in a low voice. “He’s just some kid.”

“I’m telling you, I’m right this time. I’m sure of it. He’s the one.”

“And what exactly makes this time different from all the other times you were sure of it? All the other kids you fucked up?”

“He has the mark of the scorpion,” Gerard hissed.

“So did all the others!”

“You don’t understand, this time it was so clear, like– like a painting on his skin–”

“Gerard,” James said firmly. “You can’t. He’s just a kid.”

“He’s barely younger than me, I’m sure he’s strong enough–”

“Gerard,” James warned.

This was too weird. Hearing people talk about me like this was making me feel sick, and the smell of my own vomit from yesterday contaminating the air wasn’t doing much to ease the nausea. I didn’t want to hear any more. “Um,” I said, coughing and awkwardly stepping into the doorway. “Hi.”

“Oh, hello,” James said, immediately brightening his tone. “You okay there?”

“I, uh.” I stumbled over my words. “Thanks for yesterday,” I mumbled to Gerard.

“Anytime,” Gerard said, smiling easily. I wondered how he could transition from delusional and slightly frightening to friendly and sweet so quickly.

“So, um. What are you doing in here?” I asked.

“We came to check over the prisoners,” Gerard said.

I glanced around the small room as if I wasn’t sure whether it was empty or not. “It doesn’t look like they’re in here.”

“No,” James said. “We were just going to go into town to see if we could catch them before they got sold.”

“Sorry, why do you need to check them over?” I asked blankly. “I thought Patrick prepped them already.”

Gerard shifted his gaze to his feet, clearly becoming uncomfortable. “I like to check everyone from the Aurora we capture,” he mumbled. “Just in case.”

I waited for him to elaborate, but he just stared at the floor.

James broke the silence. “You should get going if you want to catch Patrick,” he said. “I think he left a couple of minutes ago.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Gerard mumbled. “Frank, you wanna come with me?”

James opened his mouth to protest but I interrupted him. I wanted to find out more about what Gerard and James had been discussing and I figured that talking casually would be the best way to draw it out of Gerard. “I think it’d be a good training exercise,” I said. “Low risk.”

James hesitated. “Yeah, I suppose.”

“Perfect,” Gerard said cheerily. “Frank, you’ll come with me. Dewees, you’ll stay here and clean up Frank’s sick.”

\----

Gerard’s stride was brisk and purposeful, and with my short little legs I struggled to not be left behind. “You, um,” I said, hurrying to keep up. “You seem pretty determined to find those prisoners.”

“Yes,” Gerard said curtly.

We passed a street corner where a man was auctioning off slaves and hookers, and I stopped for a moment to stare at the blatant illegality of the stall, before shaking my head and scurrying after Gerard again. “Is it really that important that you check them over again?” I asked him. “I mean, I’m sure Patrick did a good enough job; made them look presentable and all.”

“You don’t understand, Frank,” he snapped.

“Uh, no, I don’t. Care to elaborate?”

“No,” he growled. “You come and train with me, you play by my rules. Savvy, bitch?”

“No. Not savvy,” I said, irritated. “Why do you have to be so difficult?”

“Because you’re training with me, which means I’m in charge, which means you follow my fucking rules.”

“What even are your rules?” I spluttered. “How am I supposed to follow them if you haven’t even told me what they are?”

“Right,” he growled, having shot from zero to sixty rage in about six seconds. He fisted his hand in my collar and shoved me up against the wall of the alley. I choked a little in shock. “As of now,” Gerard hissed, “there’s only one rule. And it’s that you shut your fucking mouth. And you better fucking follow it, or I’ll tear you a new–”

“Gerard!” Patrick exclaimed, bustling up to us with five prisoners bound up in rope behind him. Gerard dropped my neck and whipped his hands behind his back. “What are you doing here?” asked Patrick, apparently not having seen Gerard half-strangling me.

“I didn’t get a chance to check the guys from the Aurora,” Gerard said easily, all the malice and hostility suddenly gone from his voice.

“Oh, right,” Patrick said. “Well, I already sold one, but he was pretty young. I doubt he was even your age, let alone ten years older.”

“Right,” Gerard said, sounding relieved.

“You wanna take a look at the rest?”

Gerard hummed in agreement and stepped past Patrick to examine the captives. He glanced back at me. “Frank?”

“Huh?” I said dumbly.

“Get over here. This is me. Training you.”

“Oh,” I mumbled.

“I check everyone we take from the Aurora. I’m– I’m looking for the man that killed my brother.”

I nodded silently, remembering his rule about not speaking.

“You’re looking out for a guy a few years older than me,” he explained. “I was just a kid, and this guy couldn’t have been older than a teenager. I barely remember what he looked like, but– but I know I’ll recognise him when I see him. He had brown hair, I think. And a kind of oversized forehead.” Gerard started to scan over the small group of men lined up in chains. “Frank?” He turned back to me. “You gonna help?”

I nodded vigorously, not wanting to fail Gerard’s training. And besides, I felt bad for Gerard, having lost his brother and all. I wanted to help.

Admittedly, all he was probably going to do when he found the killer was shoot him in the back of the head, but I wanted to help all the same. Anyway, maybe I could persuade Gerard to talk to the guy before we did anything serious. You know– maybe he had a perfectly legitimate reason to kill a six year old.

\----

There were no men with brown hair and large foreheads among the group, so Gerard left the dirty marketplace with his already capricious good mood damaged. I traipsed along beside him awkwardly, glancing over at his hunched form every now and then. I couldn’t help but feel bad for him.

It had hurt so much to lose Jamia, and we had only been friends for a day. I couldn’t possibly imagine how it must feel to have a sibling snatched away from you like that. I tried to imagine having a brother or sister. I tried to imagine their death. I felt like it would probably destroy me.

It wasn’t really an excuse for Gerard’s constantly volatile and violent state or the fact that he had now tied me to a table twice in the past three days, but it helped me understand a little. The fact that he was so close to finding the killer every time yet so far away must take so much out of him.

I was a little confused at my intense compassion for the delusional maniac, especially as he had never really been anything but a total asshole to me, but I supposed that we were all a little messed up in our own ways and it was just something you had to accept.

\----

I was doing a really crappy job of accepting it.

Gerard was fucking mental.

He seemed to be trying to befriend me– he would give me tips on how to clean the ship and how to hold your liquor, and he was even starting to teach me some attack tactics– but then he would do something insane like tying me to a table leg again because I took the last biscuit, or threatening to throw me overboard because I made a throwaway comment about his very close relationship with his rum bottle.

I kept telling myself that the guy was just a psychopath and there was no point trying to figure him out, but then every now and then, I would remember what I heard of him and James talking about me.

He’s the one. He has the mark of the scorpion.

I wondered what they had meant by that. The mark of the scorpion. It sounded like something to do with destiny, a load of superstitious bullshit, but it still seemed to strike up something inside of me.

My fingers brushed over my neck absently. My birthmark, I thought abruptly. It had been there since I was young; just a faint outline of white– but it looked like a scorpion. I never thought that it would mean anything.

I suddenly remembered Gerard sorting my blanket and brushing my hair back from my face the night Jamia died. Or rather, brushing my hair back from my neck. I remembered how uncharacteristically sweet he had been to me. He must have seen the mark.

I sighed. Gerard was mental.

\----

“Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy.”

\----

Ryan Ross was a prostitute.

We’d picked him up last time the ship had docked, and he’d been sort of hanging around with us ever since. I hadn’t spoken to him and I didn’t really know anything about him, but one thing was for certain, and that was that he was a prostitute.

He seemed to fit in with the crew, but there was just something a little off about him. The easy, lazy way he would drape himself over whoever was nearest as they talked, the glances at each crew member he would sneak when he knew they would be looking. The way his tongue would flicker out and just dash over his lower lip as he watched us talking.

And of course, the unforgettable moment when he strolled in while we were eating and casually slipped into the conversation that if anyone had a couple of silver pieces then he was game for tonight, or any other night, for that matter.

Yeah, I was onto him.

\----

It was surprisingly easy to get used to Ryan’s presence around the ship. I was a little apprehensive about him at first, having only heard terrible stories of prostitutes from my family in the past, but I was soon put at ease when James explained to me that he used to be a member of the crew and was actually just a normal (ish) guy who needed some cash.

Then he proceeded to explain the circumstances that allowed Ryan to make money off of almost every man on the ship.

Nearly everyone was gay. I was on a gay pirate ship.

I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about this, as I had always had it drilled into me that homosexuality was a terrible, terrible sin. But then again, so was stealing and killing, and I was turning a blind eye to both of those in order to keep my place on the ship, so I didn’t see why this should be any different.

Everyone was happy with Ryan’s presence– he was sweet and sarcastic and barely mooched any food off us, and as long as he was getting laid every other night, he was kept sated. Having an extra person on board wasn’t a problem at all.

Until he drank all the rum.

I hadn’t been aware of how unhealthily dependent on alcohol the entire crew was. Within half a day, James was moaning to everyone, Patrick was sharp and irritated, and even Ray was a little more uptight than usual. The Captain seemed pretty much the same, but I noticed that he see suddenly held some tension in his shoulders that hadn’t previously been there. There was less poise in his movements.

I would have thought that Gerard would be the one most affected by this disaster– rum was his life force– but he seemed to be coping frighteningly well. In fact, he wasn’t acting any different at all. If anything, he seemed a little happier with things. It was kind of scary. When I questioned him about it, he simply shook his head and smirked knowingly at me.

I took this as something to be very worried about and made a note to talk to James about it later– but James was too busy whining about being too cold and too hot and not having enough rum to listen to anything anyone else said. I fell asleep that night with James mumbling miserably about having to drink fermented lemon juice across the room.

\----

Gerard’s voice was more of a slurred hiss than a whisper when he woke me up. “Fraaaank." His mouth was uncomfortably close to my face and I could feel his damp breath on my ear. It wasn't a great way to start the day.

"F-Frankie! It's three in the morning. Get up!”

It wasn't a brilliant way to start three in the morning either. I grumbled and batted him away. “What?” I mumbled.

Gerard laughed then interrupted himself with a hiccup. “Fraaankie,” he drawled, long and drawn out.

I sat up slightly, propping myself up on one elbow and scrubbing at my face with my free hand. “Are you drunk?”

“Of course!” he giggled quietly. “Come on!”

“Come on where?” I groaned.

"Wanna show you," he mumbled, tugging at my arm. "Frankie,” he slurred. “You’re lanky."

“Jesus Christ, how drunk are you?"

“I dunno,” Gerard said lazily. “I love rum. You want some of my secret rum?”

I wrinkled my nose. “Not really a fan of the stuff.”

“When you’re drunk the sound of everyone complaining just fades into the background.”

I paused. James was being annoying as fuck. Patrick was a snappy bitch. Even the captain was being sharper with us than usual. And Ryan had been slutty as ever, copping a feel from everyone he could whenever possible. “Rum’s suddenly sounding good,” I said quickly.

\----

“I have so much booze,” Gerard giggled, clumsily pulling four bottles out from under his bed. “I love booze.” He popped the cork out a bottle with his teeth, then gulped down more alcohol than I could probably manage in an entire night. He pulled off the bottle and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, then sighed. “I love booze,” he repeated happily.

“Yeah, that’s great.” I said. “Am I actually going to get any?”

“Sure,” Gerard slurred, giving one of the bottles a shove in my direction. It wobbled and toppled over, but I was quick to catch it before the glass hit the floor.

“Maybe I’ll just take this one instead,” I muttered, gently prising the half full bottle from Gerard’s loose grip. I gulped down a couple of sips, but I wasn’t used to drinking, and it burned my mouth a little. I coughed and gagged.

“You gotta– you gotta hold your breath,” Gerard said. “Hold your breath b’fore you can smell it. Then it don’t taste as bad.”

I copied him and held my breath, and I was actually a little surprised when it worked and the bitter taste dulled. “Oh,” I mumbled. “Thanks.”

Gerard tipped his head to the side in a weird movement I think was intended to be a nod, so I nodded back. Gerard reached for the bottle again, but I lifted it away out of his reach, then swiftly held my breath and took a swig myself. The technique worked consistently, and I kept it up for several hours, bottle after bottle, until I was about as intoxicated as Gerard.

I hadn’t been drunk before, so it was a whole new world for me. I felt warm and buzzing and everything was weird and out of focus, and my irritation with the other crew members had dissolved almost completely. It was easier just to laugh at the stupid things Gerard said, and soon we were talking like we had been friends for years. That phase didn’t last very long though, as soon Gerard had subtly taken back his liquor bottle and returned to gulping down the alcohol like he’d just found water in a burning desert. It didn’t take long for us to both be so lost to the rum that we could barely form coherent sentences.

Barely.

Through our random drunken mumblings, Gerard had let slip that he wanted to take me to Parade Island because I was special and I had the mark of the scorpion. This was probably one of the weirdest things that anyone had ever said to me, but I didn’t question it, I just listened. This had something to do with what Gerard and James had been talking about earlier, I knew it. Something to do with the kids Gerard had ‘tried’ and hadn’t worked, the kids Gerard had fucked up.

I genuinely couldn’t decide whether I didn’t want him to fuck me up or whether I actually did. In the moment, there was something oddly romantic about having him destroy me. Harshly beautiful. I wondered what he’d done to the others. What he was going to do to me.

I listened to him talk about how I was special. Apparently I was “the Scorpion Child or some shit,” he had said as he traced the birthmark on my neck with his fingertips. “You’re my key.” He spoke with something fragile behind his voice, but something passionate. He wanted me, he had said, eyes locked with mine. “I want you.”

I was completely inebriated, and slightly obsessed with the idea of him destroying me, so I didn’t protest at all when he tucked my hair behind my ear and started mouthing at my neck. I held onto his jacket as he pushed me against the wall, and I didn’t even question it, barely even noticed the transition from mouth on neck to mouth on mouth.

It was a clumsy kiss, tainted with the bitter sting of rum, but I still held on to him like a lifeline, letting him press me into the side of the bed like I was just his to be used. He tugged at my shirt, urging me to break the kiss and let him take it off. “I want you,” he mumbled against my mouth. “Please.”

I’m sure it was the alcohol, of course it was the alcohol, but I really fucking wanted him as well. “Yeah,” I breathed. “Yeah, okay.”

\----

Tobacco mingled with rum and cotton was starting to become one of my favourite smells.

It was a hideous combination. I hated smokers, I hated chewers, I hated rum. But the smell was familiar. My head was blurry and I kind of felt like my brain was full of sawdust though, so I couldn’t pinpoint why it was so familiar and comforting.

Things started to come together in my mind, and vague memories of getting really fucking drunk seeped into focus. I groaned and buried my face in my pillow, curling up into a ball. My legs brushed against another body and I jumped a little, but when soft arms wrapped around my waist and the body curled closer to mine I sighed and relaxed.

I remembered drinking late into the night, so late that the sun had started to rise and white light had started to creep under the door. I supposed that was why I still felt kind of tipsy, and why I wasn’t backing away from the stranger in my arms.

“Mm,” the other person mumbled. I couldn’t tell if it was a noise of discomfort or contentment and I was too groggy to ask. “Frankie.”

“Ungh,” I groaned. “Hwhat?” I had intended to ask who I was talking to, but my mouth and my mind weren’t coordinating.

“You smell nice,” the person mumbled into my neck. “Frank.”

“Who’sit?” I muttered.

“Gee. Ge-Gerard,” he slurred. “Hm.”

“Wait, what?” I mumbled. There was something off about that. Gerard. I didn’t like Gerard. Shit, I fucking hated Gerard. “Gerard?”

“Frankie?”

“Don’t call me that,” I hissed. “What happened? Why the fuck am I–” I froze. “Where’s my shirt?” I scrambled out of the covers in search for the item, but squeaked in shock and hid back underneath the blankets again when I realised I was just in my underwear. I curled the blankets tightly around me like a shield. In pulling the blankets closer to me, my hand closed around Gerard’s jacket, and I flinched and tossed it at him. I buried my face in my hands and shuddered. “Please,” I moaned, traumatised. “Please, for the love of god, tell me I didn’t sleep with you.”

“Well, um,” Gerard said. “I’m dressed. ‘Cept for my jacket.”

I wasn’t sure whether the dominating emotion was relief or stress from the fact that I was still in my underwear. I made a weird uncomfortable noise to get my point across.

Gerard passed me my shirt and pants from the floor and I awkwardly pulled them on under the covers, almost strangling myself with my shirt and almost cutting off my dick with Gerard’s stupid tight pants in the process. “Why the fuck was I half naked, anyway?” I asked, getting up out of the bed.

“We were drunk.” Gerard shrugged. “I don’t know.” He flipped over the blankets and tilted his head to the side, apparently checking the covers for something. “Well, the sheets are clean.”

“Oh,” I mumbled, realising what he was checking for. “Well, that’s a nice plus,” I said brightly.

“Yeah,” Gerard laughed.

“Well, as great as this has been, it feels like there’s two hammers beating each other to death in my skull, and I don’t think I’m ever getting drunk again.”

“Maybe that’s best for you.”

“Mm,” I agreed. “You, on the other hand, couldn’t lay off the rum for a day.”

“Excuse me?” Gerard said indignantly.

“You know,” I said. “You seem to have a pretty intimate relationship with that bottle. Just saying. Maybe you’re a little too dependent on it.”

“I just like to drink sometimes,” Gerard insisted. “We’re on a tiny little ship in the very middle of the middle of fucking nowhere. What else am I supposed to do for fun?”

“Ryan?” I suggested.

“Ryan is the one who drained the ship of our main rum supply. Because of him, I’m reduced to my emergency stash.”

“Why’d you share it with me if it’s so special?” I asked, turning to the mirror on Gerard’s wall to straighten out my shirt.

“Dunno,” Gerard said, irritated. “I’d never seen you drunk, I hoped you’d be a fun one.”

“You’re a dumb drunk,” I said, fastening my top button. “Fuck,” I hissed when I caught sight of the purple mark on my throat. “A dumb drunk who ruins my life by giving me a stupid hickey. Thanks a lot.”

“Sorry,” Gerard said uncomfortably, raising his hands as if in surrender. “Jesus, I must have been pretty damn drunk to make a move on you.”

“Thanks again,” I muttered.

“You’re welcome,” Gerard said cheerily, patting me on the shoulder. “I’m having breakfast. Wanna come with?”

“No,” I snapped. “I fucking hate you.”

“Right.” Gerard paused. “Never speak of this again?”

“Fucking deal.”

\----

Gerard was inebriated once again before midday. I think it was safe to say that the whole experience would just be washed out of his brain with rum by the end of the day.

I, on the other hand, was having much more trouble getting the sickening image of Gerard kissing me out of my mind. With every hour of the day that passed, pieces of last night came back to me in more detail each time. All the weird things Gerard had said about ‘the scorpion child’ came flooding in. “You’re my key.”

I shuddered. This was some creepy shit. I’d known that Patrick had been right the whole time; Gerard was without a doubt completely delusional. But I wanted to find out what was behind his insane beliefs. What did he mean, I was special? Just because I had some stupid birthmark it didn’t mean I was the saviour of the world. I remembered the light and hope in Gerard’s eyes when he spoke about me, and started to worry a little that he really thought I was some sort of god.

Whether it was that or not, Gerard had this preconceived notion that I was going to unlock something important for him, and there had to be something backing that up. I wanted to know where the hell he was getting these ideas from, and it was consuming me, but I forced it down. I tried to forget about it for the time being. The important thing right now was that we were docking the ship at The Cove soon, which apparently meant more alcohol and a much wider variety of prostitutes to choose from.

The Cove seemed to be some sort of pirate haven where back alley transactions could be made in broad daylight, no questions asked. That explained the slaves and hookers I’d seen hanging around last time we had been there with Patrick.

Everybody was very eagerly awaiting having access to alcohol again. Even though it had only been two days, everyone seemed to be going off the rails. I felt pretty pleased that I wasn’t as dependent on alcohol as everyone else, and I wondered how you could even get yourself into the sort of state where you can barely go a couple of days without liquor. I supposed that it was like Gerard said. Other than Ryan, there wasn’t really much to do on the ship.

\----

I was curious. That was my excuse. Curiosity.

It wasn't like I had a couple of coins in my pocket just in case. It wasn't like I was actually considering it.

It was just that- if you weren't a drinker, there really was absolutely nothing left to do on board, save for hanging out of the captain's bedroom window by your ankles and scraping barnacles off the hull. I wasn't allowed up on deck anymore since the little incident where I pulled the wrong rope and we nearly crashed into quite a scary collection of jagged rocks. I couldn't mess around with Dewees (even I had taken to calling him that by now) because he was miserable as fuck without his liquor; I couldn't just sit and eat stale, mealworm-infested biscuits because Patrick had drained our food supply with his compulsive snacking. Not only were we out of rum, we were out of stale biscuits and precious shrivelled citrus fruits.

We were supposedly going to reach The Cove in a couple of hours, according to Dewees, but I didn't really take the information in. Last time he told me our estimated time of arrival was 'a couple of hours', it had taken an entire night before we were even remotely near the place we had been aiming for.

I was bored as all hell, and I had a couple of spare coins in my pocket for no particular reason. I stumbled awkwardly up to Ryan's room (for no particular reason), tripping over my feet a little with the nerves from not doing anything risky or weird at all.

What was I doing? I wasn't really sure myself. I wanted to replace the sickly images of Gerard and me with slightly less sickly images of Ryan and me. I supposed that it would be a minor improvement at least. I didn't hate Ryan. His very presence didn't disgust me. Ryan was good, Ryan would be an okay substitute.

Still, I wished that there was something else I could be doing. It wasn't a big deal, but this wasn't exactly the way I wanted to lose my virginity.

"Frank!" Dewees squealed, bounding up to me. I'd never heard him squeal before, and it was seriously weird, and a little scary. "Frank, look!"

"What's got you so happy?" I grimaced.

"Look," he insisted, dragging me away from Ryan's room and up onto the deck.

"But I'm not supposed to-"

"Fuck that, we're here!"

And indeed we were. The Cove was in sight, just a couple of hundred yards away. "Does this mean you're going to stop being a whiny bitch?"

Dewees shot me a look. He glared at me for a moment, but then sighed and nodded in admittance. "Yeah," he smiled. "Ah, rum. Man's best friend."

I frowned. "Isn't that supposed to be dogs?"

"No," James said lightly. "It's definitely rum."

\----

“Love me or hate me, both are in my favour. If you love me, I’ll always be in your heart. If you hate me, I’ll always be in your mind.”

\----

The Cove really was a haven. With the coins I had in my pocket for no particular reason (absolutely not for a prostitute), I purchased some pants that didn’t suffocate my dick, along with a whole bag of lemons and oranges, which apparently were extremely important on the ship. After Dewees explained what scurvy was to me and how citrus could prevent it, I made it my mission to eat about eight lemons a day. And when James said proudly that he’d recently discovered that you could ferment lemon juice to make a completely disgusting but close to effective rum substitute, we bought another entire bag.

When we got back to the ship, almost everyone had gone. James and I had been among the first to realise that the ship had actually reached port; everybody else had left a while after us so were still out in the town.

We went down to the cargo hold and restocked the food store, and I went to my room to change into my new pants. Once our new stuff was dealt with and put away, James and I sat at the table with a lemon and a non-maggot-infested biscuit each, nibbling eagerly away at the first food we’d got a hold of in about twenty four hours.

“So,” Dewees mumbled through a mouthful of biscuit (which was actually not stale for once). “Have you slept with Gerard yet?”

I choked on my food and spluttered until I could breathe again. “What?” I rasped, my throat dry with biscuit crumbs. “Why the fuck would you say that?”

“The hickey.” He nodded at the dark purple mark on my neck.

“Wh– how do you know it wasn’t Ryan?”

James shook his head. “You had money today, it couldn’t have been.” He took a bite of his lemon and gagged a little bit. “Plus I heard you two last night.”

I squeaked embarrassedly and tried to cover it up with a violent cough. “We didn’t sleep together,” I said in the most composed voice I could manage.

James laughed roughly. “I know, I’m just messing with ya. Gerard would never forgive himself if he let that happen.”

I froze. “What?”

“It doesn’t matter,” James said dismissively, examining his lemon.

“Yes, it does!” I said insistently. “This is that thing I heard you talking to him about last week, isn’t it? About the scorpion or something. I’m a key, right?”

“Look. That’s just what Gerard thinks, okay? If he says anything to you about it again, just ignore him. He’s delusional. He thinks you’re some sort of key to a ‘Parade Island’ or something. It’s a load of bull, trust me.”

“How do you know that? Have you actually seen my birthmark?”

James looked a little taken aback. “Um. No? Am I supposed to have seen it?” he asked in confusion. Then the penny dropped. “Oh, you mean the scorpion!”

“Yes? It’s a birthmark. And it does look a whole lot like a scorpion.” I pulled my collar out of the way, uncomfortably trying to cover up the bruise on my neck with my arm.

James whistled. “That’s one nice birthmark.”

“Yeah– and it just happens to look exactly like a scorpion?”

“Maybe,” he shrugged. “Gerard went through like eight kids before you that had pretty similar marks, and none of them turned out to be the key or whatever. They were all like you. They thought they could be special, and so did Gerard. Turns out that wasn’t the case.”

I laughed uneasily. “What happened to them?”

“Lost their minds. That’s what happens when you try to unlock the gates at Parade Island with the wrong kid, apparently.”

“That’s a little… scary.”

“Yeah. Gerard is.”

“What, did he make them do it?”

James shook his head. “We shouldn’t be talking about this. Just forget it. Ignore Gerard if he brings it up, and try not to think about it too much.”

“But–”

“Trust me, Frank. You don’t wanna get mixed up in this shit. Gerard’s completely mental. Please don’t forget that.”

I moaned. I wanted to know what the hell was going on. I opened my mouth to plead with James but he interrupted me before I could even say anything.

“I’m not telling you, Frank.”

“Thanks a lot,” I grumbled.

\----

An hour later, everyone was back on the ship except for Ryan and Gerard. I’d been sat on the railings at the front of the ship, swinging my legs, waiting for them to get back the whole time.

Dewees had been no help, he just kept telling me to forget it. But how was I supposed to forget something like this? What if Gerard tried to use me or whatever and I ended up getting my brain scrambled like the other kids? Surely it would be easier to prevent it happening if I actually knew what the fuck it was.

I was just going to straight out ask Gerard what was going on, but he had been out with Ryan even longer than I had been traipsing round looking for lemons and pants with Dewees– and we were out a pretty long time. I found that now I needed extra loose pants to compensate for the damage done to my balls by Gerard’s idiotic skinny pants.

When Gerard and Ryan weren’t back after three hours, everyone was starting to get impatient. Captain Bryar threatened to leave if they didn’t come back within ten minutes, and he sent Ray out to go look for them. It wasn’t necessary though, because the moment Ray set out, Ryan came bounding onto the ship, a totally intoxicated Gerard in tow. Neither of them seemed able to stop giggling, and they were each clutching a bottle in their hands.

The captain sighed. “In your rooms. Now.”

Ryan and Gerard looked at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing.

“Next time you take that long we’ll just leave without you.”

The two nodded solemnly, but they still looked like they were holding back laughter. They stumbled down the stairs and I heard the distinct sound of someone headbutting a wall and someone else giggling hysterically.

The captain sighed again, shaking his head. “Back to work, everyone,” he yelled, startling everyone into action.

I dithered, not sure if anyone would reprimand me for staying up on deck when other people were working.

“God, I need a drink,” the captain muttered. “You got any rum on you, Iero?”

“Um, no,” I said. “Dewees bought a few whole boxes of bottles, though, they’re in the cargo hold if you want them.”

“Right,” Captain Bryar said roughly, immediately heading for the hatch to the cargo hold. I followed at a little distance. Once the captain had a bottle of rum in his hand and half a bottle in his stomach, he sat down with me at the table. “I was going to ask Gerard to start training you today,” he said gruffly, “but I suppose that’s out of the question now.”

“Yeah,” I mumbled. “Maybe Dewees could teach me some stuff?”

“He doesn’t have the experience. Sure, Gerard isn’t exactly mentally stable, but you’ve got to admit, he has skills. He would’ve made captain if it wasn’t for his impulsiveness. Tell you what, though, he’s a damn good first mate.”

I frowned. “Gerard is first mate?”

“Mm,” Captain Bryar nodded, taking another swig of rum. “His dad was captain, back in the day. He’d wanted Gerard to follow in his footsteps, but we all knew he wasn’t quite reliable enough for that. He’s a brilliant fighter, mind you.”

“Oh,” I said, a little surprised. I hadn’t really seen Gerard in action before. I never would have thought that he was skilled enough to be first mate.

“Don’t judge Gerard, Iero. He’s got more layers than you’ve seen.”

\----

Gerard certainly had got more layers than I’d seen before, and apparently, one of them was gay.

The day after we left the Cove, Captain Bryar told me to go and find Gerard (in the hope that he would be sober by then) and ask him about training me in sword fighting. It was just a little bit of a shock when I found him in the pantry, half naked and making out with Ryan Ross.

Gerard’s shirt was on the floor, and Ryan’s pants were tangled around his knees. Ryan was pressing Gerard up against a shelf of lemons, and I was suddenly put off eating them ever again. Screw it, I could deal with scurvy.

Ryan mumbled something into Gerard’s mouth and tugged at the waistband of his pants, and I gagged a little and backed away immediately, slamming the door with a shudder before I could see any more.

I was shaking on my way back to my room, and nausea was crawling and flooding through my blood like a deluge. I felt ill. I think it was because I could already sense the catastrophes that were going to arise from this. Ryan was a total idiot for sleeping with someone as unstable as him.

To be honest, I knew the results of this weren’t going to be that terrible. Ryan was just a hooker, and Gerard was just a one off customer. It wasn’t like Ryan and Gerard were courting. But despite my rationalising, there was still a twisting in my gut that I could only think to label as dread, and the only explanation I could find for it was that some Gerard-related catastrophe was going to happen very soon.

\----

I had been right. The Gerard-related catastrophe hit me later that day. I was getting really bothered by the increasingly vivid memories of Gerard sucking on my neck and I was willing to do practically anything to get rid of them. Just the image of Gerard doing nothing at all was enough to disgust me, and the image of him touching me with his mouth was almost bad enough to make me physically sick. Jesus Christ, I really did hate him.

With my last couple of pieces of silver in my pocket, I trudged awkwardly to Ryan’s room.

I paid him. There wasn’t much talking. He just kind of dove into it. We kissed for a little while, and it was okay. It wasn’t until he pushed me up against the wall that the wave of sickness passed over me again. This was just the way Ryan had held Gerard, just the way Ryan had kissed Gerard. I squirmed and pulled back.

“I can’t,” I said uneasily. “It’s too much like– I can’t.”

Ryan frowned in confusion and backed off a little. “Um. That’s okay, I guess?”

“Keep the money,” I muttered, trudging out. Gerard was stuck in my head, and there was nothing that could get rid of him. Damn it. This was going to drive me insane.

Fucking hell, I hated Gerard.

\----

“The difference between sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it.”

\----

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dewees stared at me, clear irritation on his face. “You agreed with them?”

“I want to find out more about this Parade Island thing,” I insisted. “It’s driving me insane not knowing. And if you won’t tell me anything, then maybe she will.”

Ryan and Gerard had implored the captain to take them to Plemont harbour to see Ryan’s old friend Hayley, who could allegedly tell the future. The two of them were intent on finding out some ‘extremely important information that Frank isn’t allowed to know,’ an inebriated Ryan had said very seriously. I assumed that it was about me, and immediately backed him up that we should go and see Hayley. The captain seemed a little confused as to why I would endorse Gerard and Ryan learning strange things about me while I stayed in the dark, but nevertheless, he seemed to trust my opinion as the only sober man on board.

I was sure that if I stayed behind with this Hayley woman after Gerard and Ryan left she would tell me what she’d told them. Or maybe if Gerard was drunk enough, I could just sit in while she talked to him. I voiced my ideas to James.

James sighed. “Are you sure this is a good idea? I mean, you don’t even know who she is.”

I shrugged. “Ryan knows her, I’m sure she’s fine.”

“You’re mental,” James stated. “Gerard’s mental, Ryan’s pretty mental too, and this woman who claims that she can see the future is most definitely mental. And you’re starting to sound just as bad.”

“You’re just trying to put me off going,” I snapped.

“Of course I am!” James said exasperatedly. “The more you find out about this whole thing, the more you’ll get dragged into it. I don’t want you to get your head all fucked up, Frank, and I seriously doubt that you want that either.”

“No, I don’t. All I want is to find out why this is so important to Gerard. Why I’m so important.”

“You don’t need to know though,” James said urgently. “Gerard is delusional. That’s all you need to know.”

“No,” I insisted. “You don’t understand. He just… He sounded so fragile.” I sighed. “I have to find out.”

“No! Frank–”

“Don’t bother trying to convince me not to go. Someone’s got to keep Ryan and Gerard out of trouble, and the captain thinks I’m the best man for the job.”

James spluttered. “You have the fighting skills of a potato!”

“And the logic and clear-mindedness of a tutor-educated aristocrat.”

James groaned in defeat. “Fine. Go. But if you come back convinced that you’re Gerard’s lord and saviour, I swear to god, I will choke the life out of you with that stupid tie of his.”

\----

“You’re wearing that tie again,” James stated to Gerard, frowning.

“Yeah,” Gerard said slowly. “So?”

A few of us were sat at the table, quietly rejoicing at the fact that our dinner was not full of maggots for once. Gerard had that strange red slip of fabric fastened around his neck again. He’d worn it almost every day of the journey to Plemont harbour so far.

“What is it with you and that tie?” James asked through a mouth full of lemon.

“I– I just like it,” Gerard said uncertainly.

Patrick raised an eyebrow. “It’s a bit shabby,” he said.

“No, it’s not,” Gerard said defensively. “Shut up.”

Patrick laughed. “Excuse me?”

Gerard’s expression hardened and all the vulnerability passed from his face. “I said–”

“Hey!” Ryan said enthusiastically, having just walked in. I guessed that he had sensed the tone of the conversation and was attempting to bring us into a more positive topic. He draped his arms over Gerard’s shoulders and kissed his cheek. The two of them seemed to have something a little more than just the relationship of a hooker and a customer going on. I was doing my best to ignore it.

“It was real lucky about Hayley, wasn’t it?” Ryan smiled at Gerard. “I mean, I’d heard her saying some shit about a Parade Island before, but I thought it was just nonsense. And now she’s gonna help you. How great is that?”

“Are you sure she’ll even want to talk to me?” Gerard mumbled. He didn’t seem to be in the best of moods after the thing with his tie.

“Of course she will.” Ryan waved a hand. “She owes me.”

“What did you do for her?” I frowned.

Ryan snorted. Everyone at the table looked rather amused. “What d’you think?” Ryan smirked.

I rolled my eyes. “Ah, right,” I said dryly. “What else?”

Ryan laughed. “Come on, I’m not that bad. And anyway, I don’t like girls, it was a really honourable thing to do. She wanted a baby.”

“Oh,” I murmured. “Well, that is a little better. I suppose.”

“Yeah. You know, I’m actually quite a lovely person.”

I scoffed. I hadn’t met a friendly hooker in all my life, and I rather doubted that Ryan was an exception. It was all a façade, I was sure of it. Anyway, he was stupid enough to date Gerard. That was a pretty big warning sign that he was a total temperamental idiot.

Gerard kissed Ryan’s cheek and Ryan nuzzled into his side. I resisted gagging.

“Well, I don’t care what Iero says,” Gerard murmured. “I think you’re lovely.”

Ryan giggled and he and Gerard kissed, sloppily, right in front of all of us.

I gave up resisting, and left the table gagging.

\----

“What have you got against me, Frank?” Ryan asked softly.

I laughed awkwardly, not turning around to face him. I carried on unloading the rum bottles into the stock room. “What d’you mean?”

“I mean… Why are you so uncomfortable with me? I don’t–” Ryan stumbled over his words, his nerves showing through. “What’s wrong with me and Gerard?”

My hand fumbled on one of the bottles and it toppled off the shelf, but Ryan swept in front of me and caught it effortlessly before it even reached the floor. His eyes stayed fixed on the bottle for a few moments, but then he looked up and his eyes met mine. He looked so fretful, so nervous. “What’s wrong with me and Gerard?” he repeated in a smaller voice.

I took the bottle from his hands and placed it neatly back on the shelf. “Nothing,” I said limply. “I’m just.” I dithered. “Nothing.”

Ryan looked up at me shyly. “Well,” he mumbled. “I like you. And I want you to like me. Just. So you know.”

I felt bad for being so snappy with him, but there was just something about Ryan and Gerard that I knew wasn’t right. Something bad was going to come of it, I was sure. Anything with Gerard involved was guaranteed to end in disaster.

I raked a hand through my hair and sighed. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I haven’t got anything against you. I just don’t like Gerard.”

“Oh.” Ryan chewed on his lip. “But he’s such a sweet person once you get past the impulsiveness,” he insisted.

I lowered my voice. “Ryan, he’s obsessive.”

“Passionate. He’s passionate.”

“He’s scary.”

“You obviously haven’t met many pirates,” Ryan said, shaking his head. “Honey, Gerard is a little sweetheart compared to half the blood crazed headcases I call my friends.”

I sighed. “He still freaks me out,” I muttered.

“Well, I guess that’s just your problem to deal with,” Ryan said indignantly. He swiftly turned around and disappeared out the door.

I felt bad. Sort of. I wasn’t sure.

I knew that I was frustrated at least. I supposed that once I saw Hayley some shit would be cleared up for me and things would be easier in general.

\----

“It’s going to be far from easy to get to Hayley,” the captain yelled to the crew, lifting his pitcher, “and I doubt that it’ll be worth it, but Gerard and Ryan have been bugging me for three days straight about seeing her, so here’s to giving it a go!” He gulped down his ale in almost one swig and the crew cheered and downed their own pitchers.

I sat awkwardly in the corner of the room with a biscuit.

The cheering fizzled out to dull general chatter and laughter, and the captain made his way over to me. “I’m doing you a favour here, kid,” he said gruffly. “I know you ain’t gonna like it, but it’s for your own good.”

I frowned and opened my mouth to ask what was happening, but then shut it abruptly when Gerard trudged up to me and slumped down in the seat beside me. There was no drink in his hand. I was suddenly suspicious. Something was very very wrong here.

“Captain won’t let me drink till I teach you to fight,” Gerard muttered sullenly. “It’s some sort of payment for him taking us to Plemont harbour.”

“Great,” I said unenthusiastically. “Fighting. With you.” I blinked. Hang on, that actually sounded quite nice. Hurting Gerard. I found a small smile forming on my face.

“No, training with me,” Gerard corrected. “It’s a lot less fun.”

My face fell. “So… I don’t get to hurt you?”

Gerard sighed. “I’m sure it’s an absolutely tragic loss for you, but no, you don’t.”

“Fuck,” I mumbled.

“Fuck indeed,” Gerard agreed.

\----

Gerard scrubbed his face with his hands and groaned. "You're the worst fighter in the history of the world."

"I'm not that bad," I muttered.

Although I kind of was that bad.

It had been hours. Hours we'd been training, and we'd got nowhere. I was terrible. I couldn't throw a punch, couldn't dodge a punch, couldn't swordfight or anything. Gerard was tired, and I was so exhausted I think I was close to death, but Gerard refused to let me stop until we made progress. (The sooner I learned how to fight, the sooner he could drink again.)

"Pick up that sword." Gerard motioned towards the sword I had dropped on the floor in frustration. "Pick it up. Now."

I reluctantly lifted up the weapon and held it awkwardly by my side. Gerard drew his own dagger from his belt.

"Take a hit at me," he instructed. "Go on."

I dithered. What if I actually hit him? I didn't want to admit it but I was a little scared of the consequences of hurting him.

"Frank, fucking hit me," he said impatiently.

I waved the sword at him weakly. It brushed his sleeve and he looked down at it pitifully as it wobbled and fell back by my side.

"Come on," he pleaded. "A real hit."

The sword was way fucking heavier than it looked. These were real hits. I waved the sword at him again and it scratched gently at his jacket, not even marking the fabric.

"What, you're going to stroke me to death?"

"I'm trying, I swear," I whined. "These stupid swords are too heavy."

Gerard raised his eyebrows. "Too heavy?" He slid his dagger back into its holster, giving up. "Too-" He buried his face in his hands. "You're unbelievable."

"I'm sorry," I said exasperatedly. "I really am trying."

"You're trying, but it's not working. You're just- so ridiculously weak."

I slumped back onto the bench. "I can't help it," I mumbled.

Gerard sighed and sat down beside me. He chewed on his lip. "Maybe we need to train you in hand to hand combat before you start trying with weapons."

"We already tried that. You hit me several times. I missed several times and ended up with what is probably a cracked rib." I rubbed at my bruised side. "You're some thirty year old pirate with a whole ton of experience, you're allegedly the best fighter on the ship, and I know absolutely nothing-- yet you're still expecting me to be a pro from day one."

"Maybe I need to start with basics then," Gerard pondered. "Like what you'd teach a kid."

"I am a fucking kid, Gerard. I'm sixteen years old, from the upper class aristocracy. I know words, I know maps and numbers. Never has anyone taught me anything at all relating to fighting."

"Hm," Gerard frowned, almost like that fact surprised him. "Basics it is then."

I sighed in relief.

"Oh--" he held up his index finger as if to make a formal point. "--Just so you know, I'm only twenty five."

\---- ---- ---- ----

Learning 'the basics' did not turn out to be as good as it sounded in the slightest. It involved an awful lot of touching-- touching Gerard-- and it was really throwing me off.

"Come on," he murmured, sliding his hand over mine and pushing my thumb into my palm underneath my folded fingers. "You know how to make a fist, I just showed you."

What was throwing me off even more was that the touching didn't seem to be bothering Gerard at all. Every brush of hands and accidental breath against my neck made my stomach twist, but Gerard didn't seem to notice-- and it was driving me fucking insane.

"Please tell me you were actually listening, Frank," Gerard said. "Because if you weren't-"

"Of course I was," I insisted.

"Okay then." He dropped my hand. "Make a fist."

I looked down at my hand. It couldn't be that hard, could it? I had just been in the right position, it was simply a matter of folding my hand up the way it had been a second ago. I curled my fingers around my thumb and wriggled my fingers a little. That looked about right. Yes. I wasn't all that bad at this fighting thing.

When I looked up at Gerard again, he did not look happy. In fact, he looked pretty damn unhappy, and the look on his face was uncannily similar to the expression he had been wearing yesterday when he tied me to the table. (For the fifth time. I'd been counting.) I wondered if I should take a step back.

"You punch like that and you'll break your thumb, Frank," he said dryly.

"I'm sorry," I moaned. "I have a bad memory."

"Yeah, I noticed," Gerard muttered. "Maybe- reflexes? Let's test your reflexes."

I was already sure that my reflexes were awful. I had a bad feeling about this. A terrible, terrible feeling. "What are you going to do?" I asked cautiously.

Gerard licked his lips. "Hit you," he said casually. "Just a little."

My eyes widened. "Please don't. I'm-"

It turned out that my reflexes weren't bad at all. Gerard's fist collided with my stomach at the same time that I kicked him in the shin. The breath was knocked out of me and Gerard was stunned for a second that I'd actually managed to react. I took advantage of his momentary shock and gave him a pathetic shove in the chest, and to my surprise, he stumbled backwards and fell to the floor.

I tried to hide my laughter, and Gerard growled and scrambled onto his knees. He grabbed sharply at my ankles and I shrieked and crumpled down to the floor with him, and before I knew it he was climbing on top of me, kneeling on my legs and pinning down my wrists to stop me escaping. For a moment I felt a flicker of terror- he was going to hurt me, his dagger was just in reach. But he just laughed. He paused for a second, then let go of my arms, pulled himself up and offered a hand to help me up. Hesitantly, I took it.

"Good work," he grinned, and I was taken aback by how genuine his smile was.

"But I just-" I stuttered. "Aren't you angry at me?"

"No," Gerard laughed. "You're finally making progress."

"I thought you said we weren't actually going to fight."

"Well, it seems like that's the way you learn best."

"So... I'm going to be fighting you?" I grimaced. That last hit had been a fluke. This was going to end very badly. Oh god. "Oh god."

"Don't worry, pretty boy," he smiled, ruffling my hair. "I'll go easy on you."

\----

Gerard's hands were on my throat while I had him pinned to the floor. Although I had the more advantageous position, Gerard was strangling the life out of me and I couldn't pry his fingers from my neck. This was not my idea of going easy on someone.

I scratched at his face and he hissed, and in his moment of weakness I managed to grasp his wrists and slam them to the floor. He choked on a gasp and I hastily grabbed a dagger from the bench and raised it above him, my breath catching and my heart racing. The insurmountable look of shock on Gerard's face was probably the most amusing image I had ever had the privilege of seeing. Now it was my turn to laugh.

But the amusement was short lived. Gerard wasn't one to give up quickly.

In less than a second he broke his wrists free and kicked me off his legs. He swiftly knocked the dagger out of my hands and backed me up against the railings, leaving me with my back pressed against the cold wood and the sea spitting up at my neck. His hands were firmly anchored either side of my hips and I was suddenly breathless and a little terrified. My stomach was turning and I found myself shaking. "You said you'd go easy on me," I managed.

Gerard laughed, and it reminded me of soft rain in summer. I pushed the thought away with a shiver.

"I did," he grinned.

I scowled at him and shoved his arms away. "That wasn't easy."

"Oh, trust me, it was. C'mon, sweetie, I wouldn't lie to you, would I?"

I scoffed, stalling to try to think of a snappy response. Nothing came to me. So I turned away from Gerard, and subtly picked up the other dagger on the bench. After a few moments of silence, I could almost sense another sarcastic remark already escaping Gerard's lips. That was when I whipped around and pressed the side of the blade against his mouth.

Gerard just smiled against the knife, and licked the metal. He glanced down at my stomach, and I followed his line of sight in confusion. He had his own blade pressed just below my ribs.

I lowered my dagger.

"Don't try and beat the best fighter on the ship on your first try," Gerard said in a low voice.

I snorted. "It was pretty good for a first try though," I said confidently. "Taking into consideration the fact that you called me the worst fighter in the history of the world earlier today."

Gerard smiled lopsidedly, neatening up the row of weapons on the bench. "Yeah," he admitted. "Yeah, I suppose you did pretty good."

I smirked. "Damn right. Same time tomorrow?"

Gerard shook his head. "God no. We'll be at Plemont in a week, and I intend to be completely and spectacularly fucking drunk for the arduous trek underneath a prison we've got planned. We're going to need to start training in the morning if we want you ready in time for when we get there."

"Morning, right. Got it." I paused. "Wait, prison?"

"Oh, yes," Gerard said casually. "Hayley lives at the end of a tunnel underneath a prison."

"Oh," I murmured. “Lovely.”

\---- 

Like many things, once I put in the practice, fighting became much easier with time.

Managing Gerard, however, did not.

We’d reached a stage in our training sessions where I was able to take him down and pin him to the floor, my hands around his throat and a knife within reach, and I would be so close to winning – but every time, he would do something obnoxious like lick my hand or snigger a childish insult at me and I would lose my concentration.

I still had yet to beat him in training and in our ever tedious quarrels, which had recently progressed from petty arguments over the last biscuit to infuriated complaints about each other’s mere existence.

Gerard was not faring well without alcohol.

He was still persistently vicious in our training sessions, strangling me with a determination I’d never seen the likes of before, but he seemed to have completely lost the energy to be a decent human being. Still, his violent teaching methods were working surprisingly well. I was really starting to enjoy the adrenaline rush I got from treading on him.

\----

“Treading on me is not a proper fighting move,” Gerard hissed in irritation as I stepped off his stomach.

“I think it’d work pretty well to stop people running away with our stuff,” I shrugged casually.

Gerard snarled. “You’re not supposed to question me,” he said. “I have expert knowledge.”

I scoffed. “You’re just upset that I’m actually catching up to you.”

Gerard looked a little bewildered. “Wait, you’re catching up to me?”

“Uh, yeah. I’ve knocked you on your ass four times today.”

Gerard suddenly smiled the biggest smile I’d ever seen on his face before. Perhaps the only smile I’d ever seen on his face before. “This means you’re almost trained! I can almost drink again!” he beamed.

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah. Great.”

“You do realise that the more I drink, the less I’ll insult you.”

I smiled sweetly. “But I love your insults. They’re so underdeveloped and thoughtless. Just like you.”

Gerard lunged.

I laughed as he pressed his dagger against my throat. “I only said that to get another fight out of you,” I said.

Gerard loosened his grip on my neck–

“Although it is true,” I added.

–Then he kicked me in the crotch.

\----

Night had fallen and lamps provided light only sufficient enough to see how much rum was left in your glass, and everyone had clumped into a big drunk crowd up on deck. Gerard and I sat, leant against the railings of the boat, not really clumped together, and most certainly, painfully, not drunk.

Crew members laughed and slurred allegedly hilarious anecdotes to one another, and Patrick and Ryan twirled around together to Ray’s guitar, gigging hysterically, then pretending to ballroom dance when Ray began to play a softer song.

I was so immensely bored, I had almost convinced myself that I was actually going to die from it. That was when Dewees thundered over, drink in hand and a massive stupid grin on his face, and of course I said yes when he offered to find me something fun to do.

I regretted it immediately.

The something was Gerard.

“Dance,” Dewees ordered.

I stared at him.

“Dance together. It’ll be fun.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You should really read up on the definition of ‘fun’.”

“I can’t read,” James said irritatedly. “Just c’mon,” he whined. “It’ll give you something to do, at least.”

I was just about to flat out refuse when Gerard shrugged and stood up. “Eh. What have we got to lose?”

I scoffed. “Our dignity?”

“Everyone’s drunk off their asses. They barely have a clue what’s going on right now, I seriously doubt that they’ll remember tomorrow. So, what d’you say?” Gerard held out his hand. “Care to dance?”

I stayed put.

“I said, care to dance?” he asked, more forcefully this time.

I sighed. “I don’t really have a choice in the matter, do I?” I asked dryly.

Gerard smiled lopsidedly. “Nope.”

\----

“Man, you’re a shitty dancer,” I said, shaking my head.

Gerard looked uncannily like a kicked puppy for about half a second before the usual dead-eyed expression took over his face. “I’m a fucking swan,” he said crisply, twirling me too forcefully in his arms, then stumbling and almost treading on my foot.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, you are a swan. A swan with one leg. And one eye.”

“And the best fucking combat skills to grace this earth,” he added.

I laughed. “Whatever you say.”

Gerard opened his mouth to snap back a smart quip but interrupted himself stumbling again. He stopped moving. Ray kept playing, but Gerard pulled back.

“Come on,” I said. “We were just getting into it.”

Gerard shook his head and laughed a little. “I’m just gonna end up falling over.”

“Nah, I’ll teach you. Come here.”

I grasped his wrists and placed his hands on my hips. (He’d slightly violently insisted that he led. I agreed. I was too small to take the leading part anyway.)

“Now you take my hand,” I said, trying to be gentle. He seemed kind of fragile tonight, and I suspected that it had something to do with the fact that Ryan hadn’t taken his eyes off Patrick in hours. Gerard fumbled to lock our fingers together. He was a little sweaty, but his hand was warm and mine was cold, so I held on.

Ray’s song finished, and he paused before starting another. It was another soft, fairly slow song, with a low melody and an easy rhythm.

“Just move your feet when I do,” I murmured to Gerard as I began to step slowly in time with the music.

Gerard attempted to copy my movements, and albeit very tentatively, began to dance with me. He looked like he was concentrating pretty intensely. I don’t think I’d ever seen Gerard put this much effort into something before. Ordinarily everything was just a breeze for him.

Except for dancing, apparently.

I tried not to take pride in the fact that he sucked. “You’re doing good,” I said. “Good for a beginner.”

He laughed. “I’m still terrible, but thanks.”

I rolled my eyes. I’d never really seen Gerard being modest before, and it was much nicer than his usual conceited self. To be honest, he was actually coming across as quite sweet.

We danced for a few more songs, talking a little, and surprisingly, not arguing at all. But it was late, the stars and moon were high in the sky, the captain had disappeared off to his room, and I think Gerard was close to falling asleep on me. He had sort of sunk down and was leaning his forehead against my shoulder, and his hands had fallen slack on my waist.

“You wanna go to bed?” I asked gently, trying not to disturb him too much.

Gerard slurred something unintelligible. He paused. Then, “’M not tired.”

I sighed. “You sound like a nine year old.”

“You sound like a nine year old,” Gerard mumbled into my neck, fisting his hands in my shirt and slumping against me.

I rolled my eyes and tried to lift him by his arms to the door, but the weight of his tired body dragged me down. “Jesus,” I choked. He seemed to be getting heavier by the second. “How much do you weigh?”

“Too much,” he mumbled sullenly.

I frowned and loosened my grip. “Hey, I didn’t mean it like that,” I said gently. “I’m just tired too, and I’ll have you know, it’s actually kind of difficult carrying a grown man down a flight of stairs.”

“’Specially if you’re the size of a nine year old.”

I hit his shoulder playfully. “So are you gonna carry yourself to bed or are you gonna make a poor little nine year old do it for you?”

“The second option,” he mumbled into my shirt.

“Bugger off,” I muttered, shaking my head, but I helped him down the stairs to his bunk nonetheless.

\----

I felt like a mother or something, tucking Gerard into bed as if he was a little child. He seemed too exhausted to even change into his pyjamas, so I took his coat off and let him curl up under the covers in his clothes.

The dull light of dawn was already spilling under the door. It was almost morning already. I was just going to be an exhausted lump tomorrow, I didn’t know how I was going to manage training. I sighed, and slipped out the door to go to bed, but Gerard mumbled something and I froze, my hand still on the door handle.

The word was small and quiet, almost shy. It was frighteningly out of character, and I don’t think I’d ever seen Gerard looking more vulnerable than he did now: curled up with blankets clutched tight to his chest, shy eyes blinking tiredly, long eyelashes casting soft shadows over his pale face. “Stay,” he said quietly. “Please.”

I dithered. I wanted to sleep, and if I stayed here I would most likely spend the rest of the night awake, hunched up on the wooden floor, leaning against the cold wall. But Gerard looked weak and sad for the first time ever, and although I had never been hurt because of love, it was simply common knowledge that it was agony to endure. And even though there was probably nothing going on between Patrick and Ryan at all, I knew that the thought of it had already started eating away at him, and it wasn’t about to leave him any time soon.

And now the guilt at the mere thought of leaving Gerard was already gnawing at my own chest.

“Please,” Gerard said again, in an even smaller voice.

I sighed. And I stayed.

\----

I keep getting flashbacks of things that never happened.

\----

"Training," was Gerard's first brisk word upon waking up the next morning. No 'good morning'. No 'thanks for practically carrying me to my room last night then staying there with me even though you fucking hate my guts'.

I'd slept on the floor, curled up in a ball in the corner of the room in an effort to stay warm. I was grumpy and exhausted, and Gerard was the last person in the whole world I wanted to be with right now. I groaned at the thought of being stuck with him in training for the next two hours.

Well. At least I would get to hurt him. That was always nice and calming.

\----

"Jesus, Frank, calm down," Gerard said exasperatedly. "You throw that hard and it'll just end up swerving." He gestured at the knives scattered on the ground around the target.

I gritted my teeth. "I thought we were doing hand to hand combat," I hissed.

Gerard frowned. "Well, you need to learn how to throw knives as well. That always comes in handy, trust me."

"Just let me kick you, please. Please."

"Hey, you're not usually this eager. What's–"

"‘What’s up?’" I finished in a mocking tone. "I spent my whole fucking night on your bedroom floor. My neck aches, my legs ache, and I think I have a misaligned spinal disc. I was hoping to take it out on you, since you're the one whose fault it is I'm in all this pain."

Gerard shrugged awkwardly. "You didn't have to stay."

"You looked like you were going to fucking cry, I couldn't exactly just walk off," I muttered.

Gerard growled. "I wasn't crying."

"Oh, really? Let me guess, you just had some salty water in your eyes?"

"I wasn't fucking crying."

"Sure," I said. "Pussy."

Gerard's hands were around my neck in half a second. I tried to hold back my laughter. He was so easy to provoke.

"Hey, it's okay to be sensitive," I attempted to say sarcastically, but his hands were painfully tight around my throat, and I was choking too violently to form the words.

"Fuck you," he spat, releasing my neck and kicking me down to the floor. "Fuck you, Frank."

His heavy boot was pressing into my stomach and pushing the air out of my lungs. I didn't reply. Gerard dropped to his knees, grasped my hands and pressed them above my head to the cold hardwood floor. There was pure hurt in his eyes; he wasn't even trying to disguise it anymore. He was breathing shallowly, and I could see his chest rising and falling at quick intervals. "You don't know what's going on in my head," he said, voice shaking. "Fuck you."

I expected him to go back to strangling me after that, or at least hitting me, but his hands stayed pressed to mine, pinning me back against the floor.

I hesitated. The only sound was our breath clashing. "Tell me then," I said tentatively.

"What?" Gerard asked.

"You're right," I said. "I don't know what's going on in your head. So tell me."

For the first time, I saw confusion on Gerard's face. The dead eyed mask peeled back a little. He looked vulnerable. "It's just–" he stuttered, eyes wide. He was preparing himself to speak. But then he sighed. Slumped. His grip on my fingers loosened. "I can't."

"Why?" I asked softly.

"I–" His voice cracked. "I don't know," he said weakly. "It's all a fucking mess right now." He shook his head and let go of my hands. He hauled himself up onto his feet and straightened his red tie, smoothing it down carefully, almost in a caring way. Then he tentatively let go of the tie and held out a hand to help me up.

"Thanks," I mumbled, taking his hand and pulling myself onto my feet. "You, um," I said. "You wear that tie a lot, huh?"

He stared at the floor. "Yeah," he muttered. "My brother gave it to me when we were kids. It was a thing we did for birthdays and shit back home. We used to save up to buy each other a slip of fabric from the clothworks to wear as a tie, every year. Before, um." He stopped abruptly.

"Oh," I said quietly. "That's sweet."

"Yeah," Gerard laughed uneasily, shaking his head. "Look, we should get back to training."

"God, of course."

Gerard turned on his heel and swiftly lifted a dagger from the chest in the corner. He spun it expertly between his fingers and quirked a half-smile. There was a little pause, then he looked up at me. "Thanks for being there, pretty boy," he said, ruffling my hair with his free hand. "Sorry about before."

"Thanks. Uh, anytime," I said, feeling a little bewildered. This whole situation was blatantly bewildering. Gerard and I were being civil. Maybe this training thing wasn't going to be that bad.

\----

The first thing I awoke to the next morning was an albatross singing. I felt light, and cheerfully prepared to face Gerard with a dagger. Today was going to be a good day.

I dressed and washed with my ration of water, then headed to the dining room for a delicious, only slightly grub infested biscuit. Gerard and Ryan were sat at the table making out rather enthusiastically, and I took that to mean that they'd sorted out their relationship problems.

Yeah, today was not going to be a good day.

Training was going to be a lot less progressive with Ryan pulling Gerard to the side every four minutes for 'quick' kisses or to tell him how hot he looked. Or to bring him nutritious snacks of slightly wrinkled lemons. Or to give him another dose of much needed kisses. Or to stick his hand up Gerard's shirt.

I'd tried to like Ryan, at first. I really had. But he wasn't exactly making it easy. We needed to get my combat skills sorted soon or the captain wouldn't let us visit Hayley, and although that would be a week of wasted time, Captain Bryar was severe and followed through on his threats.

\----

The up side of Ryan persistently interrupting our practise sessions was that it distracted Gerard and made knocking him down absurdly easy. But, another downside to add to the list was that Gerard misinterpreted my repeated wins to mean that I had improved, which in fact was not the case at all– he had just got worse.

Unfortunately this led to a lot of slacking on his part as a teacher, and after several hours of constantly pestering him to fight me and getting no response, I came to the conclusion that I would just have to candidly attack him. Potentially after breakfast. Breakfast was when the kissing would start, and I hoped that if I cut it off at the source point, then theoretically, I could stop it for the rest of the day.

My plan backfired, just a little bit, when I walked into the dining room the next day and neither Gerard nor Ryan were actually there. I had purposely risen a little late that morning to ensure that they would be in there– maybe I had come in too late and they had already left.

I traipsed around the ship, trying to look as nonchalant as possible and not like I was about to go and whack the first mate in the head with a plank. After some time, my search was beginning to look futile; I had been wandering the halls for at least twenty minutes and still there was no sign of them. But we were in the middle of the ocean. There were only so many places they could be. There must have been a room I missed out.

It turned out that that room was the stock room. They were fucking again. Fucking up against the shelves of lemons. In the stock room.

This looked like something that would be a little too difficult to intercept. With a shudder, I backed out of the room and made my way back to my bunk. I slumped down on the bed, a sickly twisting feeling in my gut from the picture in my mind. I was disconcertingly struck by the fact that I couldn't seem to recall anything about the way Ryan looked, while the image of Gerard, black hair plastered to his sweaty forehead, mouth slack and head tipped back, seemed to be stained behind my eyelids. Every time I closed my eyes, every time I blinked, and just lurking there in that space at the back of my mind.

I had only managed to capture an image, and I knew that should have been all I was able to cope with without vomiting, but some small, strange part of me wondered what Gerard would have sounded like, too. What he would have felt like. Tasted like. I shivered. An unfamiliar, twisting, burning feeling was building up in the pit of my stomach. I couldn't decide whether I felt like I was going to be sick or spontaneously combust. This was going too far.

I distracted myself talking to Dewees and Stump for the rest of the day, and made no mention of combat training again. I couldn't meet Gerard's eyes. I didn't know what was wrong with me.

To my dismay, Dewees started to get grouchy around midnight, and refused to talk to me any longer. He mumbled something about a growing boy needing his sleep before he dozed off, and I sincerely hoped that he wasn't talking about himself. Or me, either, in all honesty.

I spent the rest of the night futilely trying to wash away the perpetual strings of images of Gerard that relentlessly flooded my dreams.

\----

We reached Plemont earlier than expected. I was fucked.

Captain Bryar waited patiently at the top of the stairs to watch our practice down on deck. I sat in uncomfortable silence on the bench, waiting for Gerard to peel himself out of Ryan's bed and join us.

The captain was a very enduring, patient man, but it had been over an hour, and this was really pushing it. He wore a perfect mask of boredom to cover up the frustration I could tell he was attempting to conceal, from the way the he drummed his fingers incessantly on the banister, and every so often, thumbed at the pistol on his belt.

Swiftly, and with a wave of his hand, the captain ordered me to go and fetch Gerard. I obliged immediately; I was impatient to begin and that need was only reinforced by the fact that Captain Bryar could shoot me whenever he wanted if things didn't go his way. I hoped he'd be a reasonable man and not blame Gerard's lazy apathy on me.

Gerard wasn't in Ryan's room, to my surprise. I had to wander about the ship for several minutes before I found him in my own bunk, poking around.

"What the hell are you doing in here?" I demanded. "The captain's been waiting for you for over an hour."

Gerard looked like a deer having been caught halfway through the chase, eyes wide and back hunched. He stuttered out something unintelligible, then shook his head. "Never mind, I was just-"

"Look, I don't care," I said exasperatedly, "Just hurry up. You wanna be able to drink again, right?"

Gerard nodded emphatically.

"Then get up on deck and let me tread on you."

\----

The captain was relatively impressed with my acquired skills, and murmured to me while we were taking a breather that he was giving me special consideration because of the lack of concern Gerard seemed to have been having towards the training sessions.

We did manage to gain Captain Bryar's approval to visit Hayley, although it was just on a whim and because apparently he was in a good mood today. On hearing the news that we had been granted permission to leave, Ryan shot up and climbed up on deck, grabbing a couple of coats on his way, then bustled us off the ship down to the docks.

There was little time to protest, as by the time I became aware of what the fuck was happening, we were already halfway down the boardwalk and I had a coat draped over my face. I brushed off the fact that this was Gerard's coat; I could tell by the familiar rush incongruous sweetness and soft mint that flooded over me and the shiver that came with it (which I found that I was unnervingly accustomed to).

Ryan was chipper as ever the whole walk to the prison, hysterically amused by his own hyperactive antics and giggling like a child for most of the trek. He stood on my left, forcing me and Gerard to stand by each other and Gerard to talk across me if he wanted to speak to Ryan. On top of that, Ryan kept pestering Gerard and me to talk to each other, to make friends, but we both scoffed and pulled a face at one another each time he brought it up.

Aside from Ryan essentially forcing me and Gerard upon each other, the trip went surprisingly well. We made it to the prison without being hassled, and we slipped into the tunnel unnoticed. All in all, it was a rather successful and uneventful journey- until the tunnel collapsed and we were knocked off our feet by the impact of the rubble and walled in by a heap of debris.

My knees and elbows were grazed and I felt like I had snapped a tendon in my wrist. To my immense irritation, Gerard and Ryan seemed to both be completely intact, thanks to their thick-sleeved coats. I scowled and hauled myself up off the ground, but hissed and crumpled back down when a sharp pain shot through my arm from the pressure put on it. Gerard and Ryan were already back on their feet, and they were presently piling up loose rocks to form a wonky staircase up to the caved-in gap in the roof (or the floor of the prison, I supposed).

Gerard glanced back at me, and his eyes locked on mine. He gathered my situation from the look on my face, and retreated back to where I had fallen to help me back up. I stared up at him in bewilderment.

"Don't be that surprised," Gerard said dryly, extending a hand. "I'm not that much of a horrible person."

I narrowed my eyes, but took his hand regardless. I absolutely did not pay attention to how warm his skin was. I also totally did not pay any regard whatsoever to the way the contact resurfaced that crimson burning feeling in a shiver down my whole body.

"We're gonna have to climb up through the ceiling," Gerard said in a bored voice. "Savvy?"

"I think my wrist is sprained," I grimaced, poking at my swollen arm and wincing when it caused a throb of pain. "Not savvy."

"Fuck," Gerard muttered. He glanced over at Ryan and sighed in irritation when he saw that Ryan had already climbed up through the gap in the prison's floor. "I'm gonna have to help you then, aren't I?" he asked unhappily.

"It appears that way, yes," I muttered.

Gerard grumbled and shrugged off his coat, then handed it to me. "Put this on. I can't climb with all that extra weight on my shoulders."

I wrapped the warm coat around my shoulders and rubbed my sore wrist through the fabric. "So how is this going to work?" I asked, dubiously eyeing the hole in the ceiling.

"I have no fucking idea," Gerard said.

It took a fair bit of strength on Gerard's part and a lot of hissed insults on mine when he slipped and caught the wrong part of my arm, but after about five minutes of scrabbling at the broken rocks, we made it up into the hallway of the prison– only to have a gang of prisoners spit a string of slurs at us.

"Fuck off," Gerard bit back once he'd finished helping me up. He shot the institutionalised pirates a glare, and even I was a little intimidated by the violence in his eyes.

One of the pirates sniggered, the dirt on his face cracking slightly. "You think you can talk to us like that, girly?"

Gerard scoffed, his expression returning to incredulous boredom, like he could barely be bothered with people so lowly. "Who d'you think you are, the bloody Queen of Siam?" Gerard asked.

"We're the Screaming Hangman," the man said, his face twisting into a sneer.

Gerard's expression remained as bored as ever. "Am I supposed to recognise that name?"

"We dominate the whole west side of Plemont. Best fucking crew around."

"Oh, really? Is that why you're in prison?" Gerard asked sarcastically.

A slightly rabid looking man with a mangled beard rattled the bars and hissed at us. "Fucker. You're the Black Freighter, ain't you?"

I thanked God that none of the cells had caved in so there was still a barrier between this man and us.

"See, that's infamy," Gerard said conceitedly. "When people know your name."

The Hangmen ignored him. "You," the bearded man spoke again, in a low, menacing tone. "You have the scorpion child."

I froze. Subconsciously, I curled closer into Gerard's coat, and prayed that it covered my neck.

"The what?" Gerard asked confusedly.

The other pirate growled. "The scorpion child. You have him on board, don't you dare fucking lie."

Gerard dropped the façade and glared at the Hangmen through the bars of their cell. "He's ours," he snarled protectively. "He's mine."

The bearded man laughed humourlessly. "For now."

\----

Hayley had a voice like honey and velvet, deep and dark. She spoke in riddles, in twisted and indecipherable idioms, and her home made me feel as though I was drowning, depths under the sea. There was almost no light, and the little light there was was scarcely bright enough to see by, and fell in dappled speckles across the cold stone floor. There were no windows, simply a few cracks at the top of the stone wall for sunshine to slide through.

She made Ryan wait outside while she spoke to me and Gerard, for which I was immensely thankful.

She called us scorpion lovers. Gerard and me. 'The scorpion lovers', like it was some kind of title. Like we were some kind of couple.

Hayley told me I was the key to Parade Island. I didn't know whether to laugh or be seriously, seriously afraid by how vulnerably relieved and volatile Gerard looked. I couldn't decide if he looked like he was about to cry, or chuck me out the door then drag me by my collar to the bottom of the ocean. His hands were shaking, and he looked practically white as a sheet. Meanwhile, Hayley remained calm as ever, dreamy and ethereal and without a care in the world. I wondered idly if she'd just ruined my life.

\----

We trekked back through the prison, back through the gap in the floor and into the tunnel again. I managed to get down the rocky cascade only with Gerard's help, and even then we ended up on the floor in a heap, laughing till we couldn't breathe, to Ryan's immense glee.

"See? It's not that hard to be friends," he beamed.

I scowled and Gerard rolled his eyes fondly at Ryan's naivety. "Never gonna happen," I said, and Gerard laughed.

"C'mon," Gerard said, putting on his best fake pout. "You know you love me really. Lover."

I could almost feel myself pale and stiffen. Ryan frowned and looked from me to Gerard. "What happened in there?" he asked, baffled.

I shook my head. "She just gave us some useless riddles. It was nothing."

Ryan looked sceptical. "Doesn't look like nothing to me. Why'd she shut me out, anyway?"

Gerard glanced at me. Don't tell, don't tell, he pleaded silently. I sighed. "No clue," I said.

"Why can't you two just get along?" Ryan pleaded, misinterpreting our silent agreement as an internal battle.

"Because Gerard is an asshole," I said sweetly.

We trudged through the tunnel in relative silence after that, the dull, cracking echo of our boots on the rubble and stone the only sound in the dim cave. After some time, daylight began to wash over the path, gradually brighter and brighter, like finding our way up to the surface of the water after almost drowning. We were almost out of the tunnel when Ryan announced that he'd forgotten his coat and we needed to go back.

I groaned in irritation and rubbed at my sore wrist. "I'm in no fit state to go anywhere but the ship," I said. "In other words, fuck off, I'm not going with you."

"Well," Ryan said deviously. I grew suspicious and slightly worried within about a millisecond. "There is another option. You and Gerard could just go straight back to the ship together while I go fetch my coat. I'm sure you'll have a lovely time bonding. Making friends. You'll be best pals in no time."

“Best pals?” I stared at Ryan. “You amuse me,” I said dryly.

“Nah, come on, Frank,” Gerard said. “We’ll have fun, won’t we, lover?” he teased.

I scoffed. “You wish,” I said, shaking my head. “You wish.”

\----

Ryan was, allegedly, the closest thing the ship had to a doctor, since the captain wasn't willing to pay for the treatment of a professional from the town. But Ryan had returned from the visit to Hayley's much later than expected, and he looked rather like he could do with the attention of a doctor himself. In the place of his usual bright face and strong stature, he was pale and clammy, and he curled subconsciously in on himself, leaving him a hunched and tired form who would most likely be of very little help to my sprained wrist.

Gerard was next in line for the role of ship's medic, to my great displeasure. He dragged me to my room to examine my arm, a small satchel under his arm, but he hastily turned around the moment we got to the door, and hurried down the hall in the opposite direction. I lagged behind, craning my neck to hear what could be going on in my bunk that would deter Gerard so easily.

As it turned out, Dewees was in there with a hooker from the town, clearly taking advantage of the fact that we were docked. And taking advantage of something else too, but I tried not to think about that.

So Gerard shuffled along the hall and I followed to his room, which, to my immense relief, was blissfully free of prostitutes and crewmates without their clothes on. I hesitantly sat down on the edge of his bed, ignoring (or at least making an attempt to block out) the flash of memories from weeks ago: Gerard's mouth on my neck as he pressed me against the bed, my hands fisted in his hair, warmth and white fire blossoming between us like a shower of jasmine petals in summer.

The first aid kit was pretty crude, but Gerard's fingers were nimble and careful, swiftly pressing along the inside of my wrist with a firm and steady touch. I tried to keep from whimpering when he pressed against a sore spot that sent a twinge down my arm, but he insisted that he had to hear if it hurt– knowing where the damage was was a good thing, it would let him know what was wrong and what he should do.

Half an hour later, I left Gerard's room with a slightly shabby makeshift bandage, and a diagnosis of a sprained wrist. It was certainly no more than what I'd expected– so called 'treatment' I could have done myself in half the amount of time, and an absolute guess of a diagnosis. Quality service from a quality man, I thought wryly as I trudged down the corridor to the stock room.

Hideously conscious of the fact that most of the lemons had probably touched Ryan's ass, I made no hesitation in grabbing a biscuit from the shelf on the opposite side of the room. I wandered up onto the deck with my biscuit, assuming that by now the captain had probably forgotten my ban from the deck and the whole disastrous ordeal with the shredded sail, and perched on a step near the bow of the ship. The sea was like a summer sky dotted with stars despite the daylight. Sharp blue, combed with frothy clouds, spraying rain upwards like the world had turned upside down. I gnawed absently at my biscuit, and quietly let the scene take my mind over, let it wash away all the stress that was ingrained inside my head. It was like the opposite of pathetic fallacy; the ocean was a stark reverse of my mind and my body. I was a spinning and turbulent mess, my trains of thought colliding with one another and the waves of my thoughts rising and crashing like an aquatic inferno. The literal sea was a silk sheet. I was water gone wild.

Gerard was fire as he came at me with a dagger and a signature twist of his wrist as he knocked me to the ground in one hit. We neutralised each other with a casual fight; his flames drowned and my aqua burned out. It was good. Oddly rejuvenating.

But I still couldn't resist teasing. "Come on, you should be going easy on me," I said as Gerard pressed his dagger against my throat. "I'm injured," I declared melodramatically.

"Bullshit," Gerard laughed. "I don't go easy on anyone, pretty boy."

I scoffed and poked him in the ribs. "Not even a poor young cripple?"

He shook his head solemnly. "Nope. And anyway, it wasn't like you had to come with us to see Hayley, you would have been perfectly fine if you'd stayed on the ship."

"I thought– she was–" I stumbled over my words, exasperated. "It was only common sense to go with you, the woman was going to tell you my secrets– my future, for god's sake."

Gerard glanced down at the ground and then looked back up at me, mumbling, "Scorpion lo–"

I promptly shut him up before he could finish, shoving him in the shoulder, and, killing two birds with one stone, knocking his knife out of his grasp. "Don't," I said carefully. "Don't."

I was having enough trouble making sense of all this Parade Island shit, we didn't need to start delving even further into my future. Especially if it had Gerard in it.

Everything was hideously awkward after that. It did mean that there was considerably less hate, but I had to admit, after a couple of weeks I really started to miss our casual fistfights (and dagger fights) and teasing. I missed Gerard, to be honest. I was really not enjoying tiptoeing around conversations that so much as involved him, then tiptoeing around the ship to avoid crossing paths with him.

I took to spending more time with Dewees. And rum. Since drinking was very literally the only thing to do on the ship other than Ryan, I also took to spending a lot of my time in the cargo hold with the rum.

The floor was cold and slightly mouldy, probably owing to the damp sea air, but I liked to curl up in the corner, resting against the barrels, away from the clamour and commotion up on the decks above. It was rare that any sound at all got through, so when I heard a clattering noise from above, I straightened up a little and glanced around curiously.

I wasn't drunk, so to speak, when Dewees came thundering down the stairs with a wide eyed expression on his face and a candlestick clutched in his hand, but the sounds of swords clashing and men screaming reverberating off the walls were certainly rather sobering.

"It's time," Dewees said breathlessly.

I raised an eyebrow. "Time for what?"

Dewees waved the candlestick emphatically, a look of complete exasperation on his face. "Time to put those fighting skills of yours to the fucking test!"

I gnawed on my lip. Fighting with Gerard in training was one thing. Attempting to kill multiple strangers simultaneously while sporting several painful grazes and a badly sprained wrist was pushing it a little. "Is it really that important that I fight? We've got plenty of good men, we–"

"No," Dewees said firmly. "No, we're gonna need all the help we can get." He tossed me the candlestick, then turned away and bowed his head, presumably for dramatic effect. His voice was dark and low when he spoke again: "We've had a little visit from the Hangmen."

\----

The Hangmen had only been on board five minutes, and the scene was already fucking bedlam. Swords clashed and daggers rang, men shouted and screamed, and there was a puddle of blood at my feet with an eyeball floating in it. I could hear my own pulse in my ears, rushing and ringing; every part of my body was shivering and burning; my skin felt corroded. The scene was horrific: blood slicing through the air, sweat and screams mixing, so much intense and burning energy in one space. It was horrific, and it was beautiful– in a kind of weird and twisted way.

Sometimes I was disturbed by how being out at sea had changed me so much (–I had hoped that it was for the better, although it most likely wasn't–) but it did let me take interest in more unusual things, and people. There was an unexpected sense of amicable community on the ship.

"Frank, you fucking asshole!" Dewees screamed, not even looking at the opposing pirate but managing to stab him quite precisely in the chest nonetheless.

"What?" I yelled. "What do you want me to do?"

"Just fucking hit someone, for Christ's sake!" he shrieked. Now that I thought about it he did look pretty mad at the fact that I'd just been standing at the top of the stairs, taking in the view.

"Right," I mumbled. I charged into the thick of the battle, brandishing my candlestick bravely, and lobbed the first person I saw over the head; a man with long, untidy hair and a bent sword.

"Iero!" Beckett wailed. He turned around very swiftly and clipped me over the ear, muttering "asshole," under his breath before moving along to smash a Hangman's face in with the handle of his sword.

Men on the Freighter didn't fight clean.

But apparently, neither did the Hangmen, as I discovered when one crawled up behind me and bit the back of my leg with most impressive violence. I pondered for a very short moment why he hadn't just stabbed me, but then I caught sight of Saporta, attempting to drag the offending pirate back by his ankles, two swords in his hands and a fierce look of dominance on his face.

I took that to mean that we were significantly ahead, along with the sounds of unfamiliar men's yowls. Our crewmates weren't yelping out, so I assumed that things were going smoothly.

I assumed wrong. A number of our men had been gagged and bound, including Gerard. (I pushed down the stirring in my chest incited by that fact.)

The remaining crew and I fought viciously and persistently, but unfortunately, we were severely outnumbered, and each of us ended up trapped in a circle of Hangmen, imprisoned in some sort of web of swords. I was tempted to pull a daring move and slash the hand of the man reaching towards me, but Gerard's eyes caught mine and he shook his head like he'd read my mind. The grave look on his face was enough to still me. A dirty rag was shoved in my mouth, and rope was wound around my wrists in loops until I was completely incapacitated. The bearded man with the grubby face smirked at Ryan as he pinned him to the mast and tied him there, and Ryan hung his head.

I didn't think it was possible for us to be at more of a disadvantage than we were right now. But yet again, my assumptions were seriously wrong.

"Give us the scorpion child," the Hangmen's captain demanded, taking a few steps across the echoing wooden floor, the rotting planks dully reverberating the sound of his heavy boots. 

He came to a halt when he reached me, and slowly drew his dagger from its holster to point it at my neck. "Give us the kid," he snarled, turning to Gerard, "Or Pretty here gets it."

I didn't know whether to laugh at the irony of the situation or cry over the fact that this was probably the fourth pirate who had called me pretty. In my baffled state, I pondered on what the appeal was, what feminine qualities I must have.

I was getting disturbingly accustomed to having regular near-death experiences, becoming so unfazed that I could let myself daydream about my own prettiness while an extremely angry and mentally unhinged man held a cutlass to my throat.

"We don't have the kid," Captain Bryar said calmly. "So do us all a favour, save us the trouble and mess of another fight and fuck off."

Gerard scoffed. "Come on, no one's gonna believe that." He smirked at the man I assumed was captain of The Screaming Hangman. "We do have the kid. And he's mine. Savvy?"

The enemy crew growled and Stump shot Gerard a look of irritation. I gulped and prayed that none of the Hangmen noticed the mark on my neck. I could only hope that they'd just assumed I was one of the crew. After all, I looked the part, with grimy skin and knotted hair, and the stink of rum in my clothes. (I blamed Gerard for that. And Hayley. But mostly Gerard.)

The captain of the Hangmen smiled wryly and sauntered over to Gerard. "You got a deathwish, son?"

Gerard smirked. "Seems more likely that you've got one, if you're planning on crossing me."

The enemy captain glared at Gerard, and I could see his whole body stiffen with rage as he reached out, his hand in a claw to grab Gerard's throat.

That was when Gerard spat in his face, and that was when I knew that we were all well and truly fucked.

\----

"They didn't know it was me, you know," I muttered to Gerard, securing the bandage around my arm with a knot. Every part of my body ached and stung with post-battle exhaustion, and now both of my arms were out of action. "They didn't know I was the kid they were looking for."

Gerard glanced up from his rum. "Y'what?" he slurred.

"You didn't need to be so fucking defensive," I said, my voice sharp with irritation. "We could have saved ourselves the trouble of that whole preposterously extravagant escape, and–" I waved my bandaged arm emphatically– "I could have avoided almost having my arteries sliced open by a deluded asshole."

Gerard made an unintelligible sound, and slumped back further against the barrels. We were down in the rum stock, and, as to be expected after a fight, Gerard was spectacularly drunk.

"I mean, did you really have to fucking spit at the guy?"

Gerard glared at me. "Didn't want them taking you," he mumbled sullenly.

"Why?" I asked exasperatedly. "Why are you so obsessed with claiming me like I'm some sort of object? I'm not a fucking thing to be passed around to whoever's won the latest fight. And I still don't understand what use I'm going to be to the person who allegedly owns me."

Gerard shook his head, a look of discomfort on his face. He hunched his shoulders a little. "This wasn't about that."

I loosened my clenched fists, but my frown grew deeper. "What was it about, then?" I asked.

A sigh escaped Gerard's mouth, and he took a swig of his rum. "I don't know," he said. "I–" His voice was suddenly quiet and timid. "I don't know anymore."

\----

Ryan didn't speak for days after the whole Hangmen ordeal. Every time someone made an attempt at communicating with him, he just blanched white and mumbled: "They're coming back. They're going to be back soon, going to be back, and we're all gonna be dead."

I began to think that what was wrong with him was more than just an illness or a fever. Gerard soon began to share my concern, on a more internal but much more elevated level.

We didn't speak, of course. That was too uncomfortable; anything we tried to talk about in any situation just resurfaced hideous memories of Hayley's predictions. Instead, we fought. A lot. You can tell a lot about a person from the way they move, the way they fight, their reflexes and defence mechanisms.

It was casual fighting, lacking the intention of ripping each other's guts out. Just in the hope of draining some stress through a little bloodshed and bruising. But I could see Gerard's frustration in the way he hesitated as he moved, and the way his mind always seemed to be elsewhere– presumably wherever Ryan was. Gerard was permanently distracted. Well, either that or my combat skills had arbitrarily skyrocketed and all of a sudden, for absolutely no reason, I'd become better than the alleged best fighter in known history.

I hoped it was the latter, but unfortunately, it was the former, and despite Gerard's hopeless concern for Ryan, he failed to step in and take action before absolute catastrophe hit, and his whole world collapsed.

\----

Gerard cried. He clutched at my shirt, body shaking and breath tearing from his throat in gasps, his white skin ever paler than usual and his ordinarily sturdy jacket crumpling as he folded in on himself. He was distraught.

The thin night air swirled coldly in my lungs, and a horrible sense of disassociation suffocated my veins. I felt numb.

Gerard, meanwhile, seemed to be feeling everything at once. In his state of utter distress, he wasn’t even stifling his cries. It was close to early morning, but the stars were still up, so it couldn’t have been later than dawn. Gerard had woken me when he hadn’t known who else to go to– he had a fearsome reputation to uphold, but since he knew I already viewed him as a slightly pathetic, annoying lump, he didn’t seem to mind me seeing him at his lowest.

And this most certainly was his lowest. His body was wracked with sobs and tremors, and his dark hair was plastered to his forehead with cold sweat and tears. I brushed a few strands out of his face and he glanced up at me with wide, shining eyes, looking more vulnerable than I’d ever seen him before. Well, I don’t think I’d ever seen him look the slightest bit vulnerable at all. All his defences had been battered down, and his tough, cynical façade had been snapped in two.

Not unlike Ryan’s neck.

\----

The body hung from the rafters by a coarse length of rope, knotted deftly with the skills of an experienced pirate, but with the incongruous elegance that Ryan put into everything he did that could only suggest that the man’s life had been taken by his own hands.

His face was blanched white, and the glowing colour that always rose in his cheeks on fresh mornings had been bitten away by the sharp slice of the rope around his throat.

Ryan was dead.

\----

A note scrawled on a torn page of Gerard’s sketching paper was clutched in Gerard’s hands when I shakily carried myself back up to the deck.

“He told them,” Gerard croaked, curling in on himself and pressing his back against the cold rails of the deck. “He was the one who helped the Hangmen escape, and he was the one who told them our course.”

I sank down numbly next to the wrecked shell that had once been Gerard. “Why?” I asked, almost inaudibly.

“Money,” Gerard said bitterly. “He just did it for the money.”

I sought consoling words, but none arose. My mouth was dry, and I struggled for oxygen in the stifling night air. Ryan had always been such a bright, playful person– and such a loyal and forgiving man.

“Why would he betray us?” Gerard whispered shakily, voicing my thoughts. “How could he? We were so close to getting what we wanted.”

I stared blankly at the dead and desolate black ocean over the rails of the ship, having turned to kneel at the edge of the deck to face away from Gerard. Confusion and the weight of a hundred questions bore on my shoulders, all my thoughts fighting to surface, but pushing me down to drown in the process.

“What made him do it?” Gerard asked plaintively, his tone rising as tears seared his eyes and the aching of loss pinched at his throat. His voice cracked as he continued. “What could have brought him to kill himself?”

A slow, weak breath dragged its way out of my chest and past my dry lips. “Guilt,” I said, my voice coming out a rasp. That was all it could be, I was sure– and if not, at least the lie would probably be of some consolation to Gerard. “He thought he could go through with it, but he couldn’t,” I reinstated.

Ineffably consuming guilt, I supposed miserably, was a fairly good explanation for Ryan’s suicide– but what I couldn’t understand was how he’d managed to bring himself to betray and practically wish death upon the man he loved. If he’d even really loved Gerard.

I kept these thoughts quiet, not wanting to cause Gerard further distress. He was a complete wreck without the added worry that he was never even really loved.

\----

We docked at the next port we passed, and Dewees carried the bundle that was Ryan’s body to shore. We solemnly followed in the ship’s rowboats, and watched resolutely from the sea coast as James built the skeleton of a fire with dead branches, and set Ryan’s limp form alight on top of it.

Gerard remained unnervingly calm throughout the whole ordeal. Since his breakdown last night he hadn’t spoken, nor eaten, nor had he moved at all except when Dewees carefully led him into a rowboat. He didn’t even cry as he watched the strong boy he had loved be consumed by the flames and reduced to nothing but ash.

I stared bluntly as Ryan disappeared from the earth and the last intact part of Gerard’s heart went with him– yet still, in a sight I was almost scared witnessing, even through this, Gerard did not break. He remained silent and numb, the ghost of a spark still lingering in his eyes. But I could see the agony and violence crashing through his blood and his mind, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before it burned up and spilled over– and much sooner than we could prepare for.

\----

I’d thought it impossible for the stability of our lives on the ship to deteriorate even further, but as usual, I’d underestimated God, or karma, or Davey Jones, or whatever pseudo deity currently had control of the universe.

Someone up there really must have hated me.

The Aurora attacked three days after Ryan’s death. It was hellish. And the thing was, even though all my battles were now fought with the Freighter’s crew and all our thoughts were shared, the captain still had yet to tell me exactly why the Aurora were so insistent on killing us all. I knew why we were against them– they took Gerard’s brother. But what did they have against us? Surely they knew what they’d done, and, if they had any common sense, would want to stay away?

Worthless and curious questions bubbled up in my mind, but now was not a time for thinking. Now was only a time for fighting. And that I did, along with every trained man on the ship– except for the most skilled of all: Gerard.

He sat on the floor, slumped against the mast, and stared into the nothingness between his sagging form and the vicious battle taking place a stone’s throw away. I froze, mid-fight, and skidded towards him, stopping only to stab an enemy fighter in the neck. I knelt hastily beside him and shook him by the shoulders, checked his hands for ropes or chains, but found him perfectly conscious and free to move.

But yet again, to my dismay, his mind was elsewhere, far away from the lethal battleground in which his body had been set down. Daggers rang with a sharp metal screech, shrapnel hailed through the thick and smothering air, and I defended myself and what was left of Gerard with frantic slices of my sword at everyone who crossed our path.

Gerard was heavy. Heavier now than he had been when I’d had to help him to his room after half falling asleep on me. Now, he might as well have been unconscious. Or dead. He could barely walk for himself, but I’d be damned if I was going to carry him straight through the middle of a fight. I coaxed him across the side of the deck and supported him with my one arm, and hacked at the throats of the Aurora’s men with my sword in the other hand.

It was a motherfucking miracle that neither of us died. And it was an even more spectacular phenomenon that nobody followed when I stumbled through Gerard’s cabin door with him hanging off my shoulders. But what shocked me the most was the look of absolute terror and panic in the man’s eyes as soon as the door was shut; Gerard had never so much as flinched before in the face of death– and now he was a trembling wreck, clutching at my chest and pleading me to keep the Aurora out with glistening, fearful eyes. In that moment I couldn’t do anything but agree.

\----

Gerard didn’t drink the night after the Aurora came. Not a sip. So, naturally, I made up for it by getting completely fucking wasted.

It was honestly a little scary seeing Gerard sober, especially in the state he was in. It was like he wasn’t there. Like his skull had been fucking hollowed out. And when his consciousness and awareness did return, it was almost even scarier.

I found him crying up on deck again when I’d gone in search of more rum late in the night. In my intoxicated state, the prospect of communicating with the sniffling creature didn’t seem to daunting at all. On actually sitting down and speaking to him though, my assumptions were quite promptly proven wrong. It was becoming clearer with every exchange of words with Gerard while he was in this stinging, sensitive and open state that he wasn’t actually a horrible person at all.

He hadn’t been crying for himself, hurt over his loss. He cried for Ryan, for everything he was missing ending his life so early, for the intensity of his guilt and how he must have felt to think we’d be better with him gone.

I’d lumped myself on the step beside Gerard, thinking that he might want consolation, but after a brief and brittle conversation with what was left of him, he made it clear that pity was not what he wanted. He was vulnerable– but he was volatile too. By the fierce edge to his voice and the sharpness in his eyes, with dread in my stomach, I guessed that he wanted to dispel the violent guilt burning in his head. He wanted to fight. Or fuck. I wasn’t sure which, and honestly, in my inebriation, I couldn’t decide which sounded like the shittier option. Either way I’d end up on my back.

I think I felt relief when Gerard pulled a dagger from his belt and shakily angled it at my neck. I wasn’t entirely sure what the feeling could be labelled as. I was pretty fucking drunk. Sober enough to put up a fair fight though, I discovered, after Gerard shoved me back against the rails of the ship and pressed his knife a little more purposefully against my throat. I hadn’t actually intended to put up a fight at all, but by now it was not only a reflex, but I almost craved the raw release of energy I only experienced in battle. I was unarmed, but my training had paid off and I found it easy to force Gerard back by his shoulders. His muscles were tense, and after neglecting to feed himself since Ryan’s death he’d lost some of the softness I recalled he’d held in his arms and hips in our training sessions.

I was a little agitated and confused by the slight discomforting heat that flushed through my chest at that thought.

Gerard took advantage of my brief loss of concentration and threw a kick at my side, knocking me onto my back and forcing the air out of my lungs, leaving in its place a hollow, stifling ache. Gerard dropped down in front of me, poised to shove back my arms, but then he sighed, and slumped back to sit on his heels. “You’re supposed to actually try,” he said, his voice dry and croaky and his eyes bloodshot with burning tears, half obscured by the tangle of jet black hair falling over his face.

“’M drunk,” I slurred. It wasn’t much of an excuse, but I deserved some slack; I was drunk. I couldn’t come up with anything better.

“You can still fight when you’re drunk,” he hissed. “I fucking do.”

“But now you’re sober,” I stated dumbly.

“Yes, I’m fucking sober,” Gerard snapped. His tone was hostile, but there was a waver in his voice he was clearly struggling to hide.

“You fight best running on booze,” I muttered. “Why’re you sober?”

Gerard’s eyes were sharp and cold, and he was trembling, putting all his strength into keeping composure. He took in a shaky little gasp, on the verge of breaking yet again. “Because I want to feel something.”

“That’s why you wanna fight?” I demanded. “You wanna fucking get hurt?”

Gerard broke eye contact and dropped his knife to wrap his arms around himself. “Yes.” He stared bitterly at the rotting wooden planks of the decking, and curled his hands into fists to press his nails into his palms.

“You ass,” I muttered, shifting closer and wrapping my arms around him. “Feel this,” I said. I draped my jacket over his shivering form. “Feel warmth.”

He folded into my chest, numbly curling up ever smaller. By this point, he’d lost so much weight that all I could feel in my arms was a skeleton.

“Feel the respect the whole crew has for you,” I murmured, subconsciously running a hand through his hair and smoothing it out. “They need you, Gee. Don’t do anything fucking stupid. I’m just starting to hate you a little less.”

Gerard sniffed and burrowed into my jacket. “Warm,” he mumbled. His voice vibrated through my chest, muffled by the thick leather.

I rubbed his back, but he pawed at my hand and guided it back to his hair before slumping back into my chest. I found myself smiling, just a little, as I ran my fingers through his hair, scratching lightly at the nape of his neck where his hair was soft and his skin was warm. He relaxed in my arms, and a little bit of that softness returned to his body.

“Thanks, pretty boy,” he mumbled.

I briefly contemplated some smart comeback, but dropped it, instead settling against the bench by the rails and letting my head fall back so I could watch the stars.

\----

I was getting pretty accustomed to waking up with a hangover, but I was still completely unprepared for it on every occasion; something about it was still blatantly unfamiliar to me.

That thought just made the fact that Gerard had become familiar to me even more disturbing.

Already, the shape of his soft form in my arms was a comfort, despite the harsh atmosphere around us. The sea spray spat bitterly, riding on the violent wind to gain more impact as it bit at my numb skin, and the chill in the damp morning air had close to frozen both of our coats– but I felt something feeble yet precious blanketing my chest and heat where Gerard and I were touching. My breath felt steadier, yet to my bewilderment, I seemed to have lost control of it– or fucking abdicated. There was a vague ache in my chest, a little too empty and a little too full, and Gerard seemed to have unconscious control over which way the scales tipped.

Gerard was distraught when the crew came charging up on deck; his whole body stiffened and his hands tightened around the lapels of my jacket. As soon as he other men caught sight of us, however, he quite vehemently masked his distress with forced boisterousness. He sprang about ten feet away from me like my skin was made of fire, and almost habitually moulded himself into the strong and sturdy shape of first mate, squaring his shoulders, darkening his eyes and setting his jaw to mask his trembling.

He kept up the tough, antisocial façade for the entire day, almost reverting to his (somewhat) normal behaviour: swearing, insulting crew members, snapping at all those below his holy self, determinedly neglecting to acknowledge the fact that I was a human being– it was almost like the old days.

God, I’d hated the old days.

We’d all hoped that Gerard’s resolute fakery would have worn off within a few days, but somehow, he managed to keep it up for weeks. After a while, I started to question whether he was actually acting or not; there had been no flaw in his snarling and bitchy persona, not once. Even Patrick had started to get a little sceptical about whether it was an act or not, even though he was the one who’d confronted Gerard in the first place, last month when the whole crew collectively had started to get seriously suspicious about how apathetic Gerard had become.

An absent part of my subconscious wondered if what had happened after the Aurora last came had anything to do with how shut off Gerard had become. He didn’t like being vulnerable– perhaps, in fact, he hated having his feelings exposed so much that he was happier just acting like a dick. And even more of a dick than he had been originally.

Yeah, that sounded like Gerard.

\----

“You up for another round, bitch?” Gerard asked breathlessly.

We’d been fighting since the cold morning hours, and by now it was mid-afternoon and I’d had no sustenance all day. Gerard was panting and half covered in bruises, and a messy streak of blood from when my sword caught him ran down below his cheekbone, but he still seemed determined to keep fighting until the sun went down. Or until the sun fucking burned out.

I just wanted to go to bed, to be honest.

“C’mon, pretty boy,” he teased. “Don’t tell me you’re beat already.”

I rolled my eyes. “No, no,” I said dryly. “Just a little bored.”

Gerard laughed. “Sure, sweetie.” Then within about three seconds he was at my throat with a knife again, still laughing breathlessly as I wrestled his arms away and forced him down so I could kick him to the floor.

Sometimes Gerard acted so like the way he used to be it was near impossible not to forget anything had happened. But then I would catch something insignificant – or seemingly so – and the gravity of the fact that a man so close to Gerard had committed suicide not a month ago would weigh down on me like the sea on a vessel at the bottom of the ocean; pummelled with pressure it could never escape.

Gerard, meanwhile, was just floating by the whole issue like a piece of driftwood: all this chaos was still erupting under the waves, absorbed in the dark waters below him while he passed by unharmed. The whole crew was still at a loss about Gerard. Had he really managed to cast out all emotion and feeling in a night, and not allow it back in since? It was one of the more disturbing pirate tendencies to form deep bonds, then wreck them, and deny the fact that any emotion had ever been present.

But not on the Freighter. We were different; more human– we had thought so, at least.

\----

I’d found that being at sea, although I still had a suitably large conscience, I’d lost the majority of my morals. It was just routine to come along to help pillage and steal when we made port. I would have no part in kidnappings though: possessions and gold were material, impermanent and replaceable, but lives were invaluable, and not to be toyed with.

I found repercussions of my former life to be all the more distressing each time they resurfaced, and this only made it more irrevocable for me to stay at a firm distance away from the affairs of others. I wanted to be the only one to have to endure the sickly concoction of emotion one feels when being drowned in memories of a life snatched from you, especially as now it was a fairly high priority of mine to stay on the ship and out the water.

Soon we made port at Hartville, a village of little wealth with close to no produce, but Dewees had been restless.

“I haven’t smashed anything in a fucking week,” Dewees groaned. “I wanna steal shit– I need to steal shit. It’s what keeps me alive.” His voice had turned half wistful and almost fucking philosophical. “It is the bane of my existence.”

Stump pulled a face. “What, stealing?”

“Yes,” Dewees said serenely.

An incredulous snort left Patrick’s mouth.

“Excuse me,” Dewees said indignantly, “But what kind of a pirate must you be if you don’t get a kick outta stealing?”

Patrick raised an eyebrow and sighed dully. “I just like killing people,” he shrugged, a bored settle to his small shoulders. He glanced at me as if to ask why I was here, and I nearly choked on the incredulous laugh that burst out of me.

“I’m just here because Gerard fucking dumped me here,” I spluttered. “Although, the stealing is quite good, to be honest.”

“Ha!” Dewees cried, pointing his finger accusingly at Patrick.

Patrick remained morbidly unfazed.

“I told you! I fucking told him, didn’t I, Frank? Didn’t I–”

Gerard thrust his knife under Dewees’ chin and huffed out an infuriated breath. “If you don’t stop fucking screaming, you little cull,” he hissed, “I swear to god I will carve out your fucking voicebox.”

Dewees stood, rather bewildered, his eyes wide, and his mouth open. “Alright,” he half laughed.

Gerard snarled and lowered his dagger. Dewees took a step back, and I too subtly put a little more space between myself and Gerard.

“The fuck’s got into you?” Stump asked Gerard, his eyebrows rising ever higher.

A gruff noise of impatience left Gerard’s mouth, and he turned on his heel and stormed off, leaving a wake of dust and hot air behind him.

Everyone looked rather blank and bemused after Gerard left.

“Someone should go after him,” Patrick said in a bored voice.

“I nominate Frank,” Ray perked up, materialising behind Patrick.

“I second that,” Dewees said cheerily.

“Fuck you,” I grunted, then trudged away to counsel Gerard.

\----

Gerard wasn’t in his cabin. He wasn’t in the stock room, and of course, I had come to expect that he would be nowhere near the rum. He seemed intent on numbing himself with sobriety. When I found him though, I guessed that the forced numbness wasn’t really erasing his emotions at all, just hiding them from others and apparently overflowing in very disturbing and arbitrary ways. He was sat cross legged on the floor of my room, tangled in a distressed pile of crumpled scraps of paper, worn and weathered maps and scrawled strange symbols on torn sheets of parchment– and there were smears of blood scraped over almost every page in the room.

I was frightened to say the least. It looked like he was trying to summon a demon.

“Gerard,” I said.

He didn’t move. Either he was staring very very intently at what looked like a child’s scribble, or he was possessed, I decided.

“Gerard,” I repeated, with slightly less confidence in my voice. When he stay hunched over, frozen, I took a few cautious steps towards him and went cold all over: vicious scrapes littered the backs of his hands, and smudged bloodstains sullied his clothes. “Gerard,” I said more urgently, kneeling down beside him at a careful distance, wary of disturbing the eccentric order of the papers. I touched his shoulder cautiously.

His head stayed bowed and grim, but from closer I could see the tenseness in his body and feel him tremble at my touch. “You’re supposed to be my scorpion boy,” he croaked.

“What do you mean?” I asked exasperatedly. “I’m sick of this. Just tell me what the fuck’s going on.”

“You’re supposed to be mine,” he whispered.

My mouth fell open. “Well, I’m not!” I said. “I’m my own fucking person, Gerard. No one’s claiming me, no matter how important it is to you for your fucking demon summoning.”

His head snapped around. “Is that what you think this is?” he hissed. “Some idiotic, frivolous fad?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what this whole fucking scorpion child thing is. Face it. It’s just a birthmark,” I said coldly.

Gerard looked stripped raw of all his hostility. “You’re supposed to be my key,” he said almost inaudibly.

“Key to what?” I demanded. “What the fuck is this all about?”

“Are you a virgin, Frank?” he asked, suddenly calm and collected.

I was taken aback to say the least. “What kind of a question is–”

“Just tell me. Are you a virgin?”

“I’m– yes,” I stuttered uncomfortably. “But what in the name of god has this got to do with–”

“Everything. It’s everything.”

“Look,” I said. “I don’t know what kind of deluded plan you’ve got in your head, but I’m telling you, I’ll have no part in it.”

Gerard dug his fingers in his hair and pulled in distress. A few of the cracked scabs on the backs of his hands reopened, and he made a small sharp noise of pain through gritted teeth.

I carefully pulled his hands away from his hair by his wrists and held them in my own. “What are you doing to yourself?” I asked, a softer tone to my voice.

His words became entangled with themselves and he just shook his head. He snatched his hands away from mine and scrabbled through the papers to find a map with a smear of blood along the side. He dropped it in my lap, rose to his feet, and fled out my room.

I stared at the parchment in my hands. Every nerve in my body went numb and my mouth felt cold and hot at the same time. “Gerard,” I said quietly. “Oh.”

\----

Gerard had disappeared.

Dewees, Patrick and Ray had set off into Hartville to wreck shit long ago, and returned fairly quickly. Gerard had been missing for hours since he walked out on me and still hadn’t come back.

My hands ached from clutching the map and my neck was starting to lock– I hadn’t moved since Gerard left, and I only knew what had been going on from the muffled sounds of voices that echoed down from up on deck, just clear enough for me to hear. I needed to talk to someone about this– but not Dewees, not Patrick, not the captain. I fucking needed Ryan.

But, of course, Ryan was fucking dead. Just like the map said he would be.

I had been rather taken aback at first at the fact that there were scribbled notes defacing such an aged parchment, but as I scanned through them, their significance became clear. My whole mind became clear. I suddenly understood why Gerard had been acting so strangely since that night after the Aurora, why he would obsess over claiming me and then drop everything and ignore my mere existence. Why he was so desperate for me to be the alleged Scorpion Child.

Despite all the clarity in some areas, there was still such a catastrophic mess of thoughts in my mind, such a hideous jumble on the sheets of paper littered around me, and although I had managed to piece together a little part of what was going on myself, I knew I was going to need Gerard to make sense of the rest of it for me. The doors of understanding had opened to some areas of the situation, while I’d been firmly locked out of other parts I thought I’d had a fair grasp on.

I needed to know what was going on.

I dropped the map abruptly and scrambled out the door to find Gerard.

\----

The thought of what Dewees would say if he knew what I was doing deterred me from telling any of the other men that I was leaving the ship. I just hoped that they’d notice I wasn’t on board before they went to set off sailing again.

I tugged at the ends of my hair to try to disguise my face a little– I didn’t want anyone to recognise me as part of the Freighter’s crew after the state Dewees had left the shops in– and hurried through the small town, glancing from person to person and scanning for Gerard. It wasn’t long before I found him; it wasn’t like he wasn’t looking to be found, he was just scared of how I’d react.

As soon as he caught sight of me approaching him, he immediately started babbling about how I wasn’t like the others and he was sure he was right this time, and he didn’t shut up until I caught his wrists, and said, “I believe you.”

The surprise on his face was rare and sweet, and I smiled just a little and let go of his hands.

“I mean,” I said, “I believe you as far as I understand. I don’t really have that much of a clue about what the fuck’s actually happening.”

“I’ll explain it,” he said quickly. “I’ll explain everything.” He paused, and brushed his fingers against the faint scorpion mark on my neck. “I am sure this time,” he said softly. “I fucking promise.”

\----

Allegedly, a virgin youngster with the mark of the scorpion held the power to unlock the gates to Parade Fountain, where just a sip of the water could grant you your deepest longing. Clearly, Gerard had wanted his brother back. Time and time again, Michael’s name cropped up in Gerard’s scrawls on the scraps of paper in my room, and I could see the desperate effort he had put into decoding the odd lines of cursive spiralling around the map.

Much of it appeared to be Latin; I recalled from my studies the spelling patterns and most of the words, but there were a few peculiar symbols thrown into the mix that made it difficult to decipher– not to mention the fact that the map itself was a chaotic disaster and near impossible to read.

“How did you even get a hold of this?” I asked Gerard, frowning at the map. “I’m guessing it wasn’t a reputable salesman.”

“I bought it from a respected clairvoyant,” Gerard said indignantly. “I mean, I don’t usually believe in this shit. It– it was just a joke at first. But then all that weird rambling scribbled around the edges– it started coming true.”

I stared at the writing with a look of mild horror, drinking in all of the disturbingly accurate prophecies. ‘The lover of the man who possesses this parchment is not long for this world.’ Ryan. Shit, Ryan. ‘A scorpion boy in the village of Belles.’ –That should have made no sense, but– Belleville, it was my hometown. It all seemed to fit. ‘Smothered in protection from all but the birds.’ That was a little odd. I echoed the phrase aloud.

“I could only get into your house by your balcony,” Gerard mumbled. “I thought that might have something to do with it.”

“Fucking hell, you knew even then?” I asked incredulously. “Jesus. That’s why you took me instead of the gold.”

Gerard nodded in slightly ashamed admittance. “I know it’s all a little far-fetched,” he said quietly. “Well, to be honest, it’s downright preposterous. But I just want my brother back.”

“I’ll–” I said hesitantly. “You’ve got a fair amount of proof here that I could be this kid. If you can properly convince me that all this shit is true, I’ll do it. Help you, I mean.”

Gerard’s hazel eyes widened and he clutched at my jacket sleeves. “Thank you, Frank, I don’t know how to–”

“But it’s got to be on the condition that you tell me everything. No tricking me like the other kids,” I bargained. I paused. “And I wanna meet your brother.”

Another rare note of surprise flourished in Gerard’s eyes. “Why would you want to meet my brother?”

I patted Gerard’s shoulder. “I wanna see if he turns out as fucked up as you.”

Gerard rolled his eyes. “Thanks, pretty boy.”

\----

It only took an incredulous glance at a single short phrase on the parchment for Gerard to convince me completely that the story was painfully, irrevocably true. He’d come into possession of the map years ago, but he’d only started trying to read the mad, overlapping scribblings a week after I came aboard the ship. Just a few short words had stood out over all the others, and when I skimmed over them, a familiarly sobering feeling started to drip into the back of my brain, slithering down my spine. I felt like someone had climbed under my skin and inside my mind. I felt like someone had been watching my every move for the past year.

“Pretty boy,” I read out dumbly. Gerard had been calling me that since the day he took me. “How. I don’t– that’s not possible.”

“I nearly lost my shit when I saw it too,” Gerard murmured. “That was how I knew it was you. It had to be you.”

I put the map down on the desk and turned to Gerard. “If you knew I was the key to unlocking this miracle fountain thing–”

“Parade Fountain,” Gerard corrected.

I scowled. “If you knew I was the key to unlocking the ‘Parade Fountain’ or whatever right from the start, then why were you such a dick to me? I mean, shouldn’t you have wanted to get me on your side? How did you persuade the other kids?”

“The other kids…” Gerard looked uneasy. “I was kind to them,” he said. “I made them feel special. Cared for them.”

“And in exchange they let you drag them to certain doom.”

“It wasn’t like that.” There was a vaguely wounded expression on Gerard’s face. He almost looked ashamed. “I just… omitted certain details when relaying the map’s instructions to them. Only a few– just the doom part, really.”

I narrowed my eyes. “But only one man can drink from the fountain each year.” I prodded the map insistently. “It says so right here. Why the fuck would they let you steal their opportunity?”

“Kids are impressionable and dumb, and I can be pretty persuasive. It was just sheer idiocy on their part.”

I raised an eyebrow in curiosity. “How did you persuade them though? That’s some pretty impressive literary skills you must have there,” I said teasingly. I knew Gerard, and I knew that would have offered them something rather than making an effort to talk them into it.

Gerard huffed, infuriated. “I promised I’d fuck them, okay?”

I tilted my head and nodded appreciatively. “That’s fairly clever. You don’t lose anything material, plus you keep the kid a virgin till after the whole thing’s over. Gosh, I could almost class that as smart. Almost.”

Gerard laughed tiredly, carding a hand through his tangled hair. “Thanks, kiddo. Hope I’m not gonna have to make a deal like that with you.”

I frowned, a little confused at the realisation. “You never tried to persuade or bargain with me at all, even though you seemed so certain right from the start. How in the name of fucking god did you expect me to help you when you were such an ass all the time?”

“I just thought… Every time I had a plan, it failed. Every time I guided the kid in what they had to do, they failed. I started to think that maybe the real key would just come to me without a plan, and I wouldn’t have to coax them into it. They’d go willingly. Y’know, instead of being bribed with sex.”

I scrubbed my face with the heels of my hands. “Jesus. This whole thing is just disturbing,” I said. “But the realest shit is always the scariest. So I guess I’m in.”

\----

It took a while to clean and bandage up Gerard’s scratched-up hands once we got back to the ship, and he was reluctant to speak at all in the time I spent helping him. His eyes stayed fixed on my hands holding his, warm even through the bandages, our fingers just brushing together.

I secured the bandage with a knot, and Gerard tentatively curled his hands into his chest. “Why?” I asked him softly, breaking the silence as warmly as I could after minutes of tense silence.

I expected the worst, I expected guilt and distress, but as Gerard scratched at the back of his head and raised an eyebrow, shrugging his shoulders awkwardly, I started to think that it might be something else– embarrassment?

Gerard grimaced. “I can’t read Latin,” he muttered.

My brow furrowed. “Sorry?”

“The map. There’s Latin on the back, I tried to translate it but I can only just fucking read English, I didn’t–”

I covered my face with my hands. “What the fuck has that got to do with all those scratches?” I mumbled in frustration, my voice muffled. “Please, Gerard, just tell me the truth.”

“I thought it said that I had to spill blood on the map in order for you to believe me,” Gerard said sheepishly. “Like, some curse-y magic thing.”

My head fell forward and I pressed on my eyes. “Are you kidding me?”

“Uh, no. I know it sounds dumb, but I didn’t have a team of tutors like you, I–”

“Shut up.” I wrapped my arms around him and held him tightly, relief washing away the tension from my body.

“Oh,” Gerard said, a little surprised. “You thought. Oh.” His chest vibrated as he spoke, and I hummed and let my eyes close as he rested his hand on my back.

“It’s fine, you’re fine,” I mumbled into his shoulder. “You asshole. Fucking scared me.”

“Didn’t mean to,” Gerard said. He ran a hand through my hair, then pulled back slightly. “And excuse me, do you know me at all? I bloody know I’m an asshole, Frank. My entire personality is just being an asshole. My entire existence is centred around being as much of an asshole as humanly possible.”

I poked him in the ribs. “You aren’t that bad.”

At that remark, he looked almost wounded. “Excuse me? I’m the fucking baddest around.”

I pursed my lips and cocked my head to the side. “Sure, Gee.”

Gerard huffed. “Shut it, princess.”

“Fine,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You’re a disgrace to society. Your ego full enough yet?”

“Just about,” Gerard smiled. “Just about.”

\----

That night in my bunk, my mind was spinning. None of the crew knew what was going on– what I had agreed to do. I was essentially risking my life and my sanity for Gerard, and the weight of my utter stupidity was already resting heavy and sickly on my head. There was just something disquietingly compelling about Gerard that had a hold on me, tight spun and stubborn, and although it made me shudder to admit it, I sort of liked it.

Gerard had always been a fairly strong presence in my mind, ever since I first stepped on this ship, and with such a character as Gerard, I doubted that that was ever going to change. Whether my thoughts centred around hate or interest, however, had seemed to be shifting lately. He was less of a monster to me, more an associate. On the edge of fitting into the category of friend. But there was just something different about the way we were when we were together and the way I had started to see him, and it was only just falling short of scaring me.

I liked the names he called me. I liked the darkness that swam in his eyes when we fought, the feminine drawl to his voice and the devilish smirk almost permanently twisted on his face. I found it incomparably addictive to watch him as he worked up on deck, sweating and rough, laughing roguishly as he hung upside down from the rigging. I noticed myself absently stealing away each smile he gave me in my mind, treating the memories like glass, like crystal, invaluable and fragile. There was something rare and beautiful about his smile, something raw and almost precious that I just couldn’t seem to grasp an understanding of.

I tried to shake the vaguely obsessive thoughts from my head, but all I could think about was Gerard’s stupid smirk when he called me princess, and the arch of his back when he fought, and the dizzying high that suffocated all my common sense when I let Gerard kiss me back in his cabin months ago. The memory was almost more vivid and heavy than the experience: his mouth on my neck, hot and slick, biting down on the scorpion mark, and his hands tugging sharply at my hair as I choked on breathless whimpers.

I squirmed slightly, shifting in my bunk and tugging at my collar: I felt too hot in my skin, and every nerve was prickling. I winced and squeezed my eyes shut– I was already half hard. Carefully, I slid a hand down to cup myself, and bit down on my lip as a shock of warmth went through my body. I was dizzy, and the thought of Gerard was wrecking me inside, all my thoughts of him heady and hot. I tried not to think of him touching me, but Jesus fuck–

I let out a soft, weak noise and then clamped my hand over my mouth in surprise. Shit. Shit. I was trembling a little, tentative, but curious, and there was a feeling of urgency in my gut, spreading and crawling through my body like hot liquid silk. Carefully, I pressed my palm down, and a startled moan forced its way from my lips.

“Frank,” Dewees mumbled into his pillow, sleepy and irritated, and I froze in shock, my hands trembling. “Go jerk off somewhere else. ‘M tryna sleep.”

I swallowed, crossing my legs in a vague attempt to ignore what I was feeling. “Sorry,” I managed, my voice slightly strangled.

Jesus Christ. I rolled over and buried my face in my pillow, groaning in frustration and hearing Dewees laugh dryly from the bunk beside mine.

“Fuck you,” I mumbled, my voice muffled.

“Nah, fuck Gerard instead.”

I grumbled in defeat, propping myself up on my elbows so I could glare at Dewees, but he just chuckled and closed his eyes to go to sleep again. I sighed and shoved my face back into my pillow, clenching my fists, tired and hot and pissed. Fuck Gerard. Jesus Christ, I hated him. Fuck Gerard.

\----

The next morning was disastrous. I felt exhausted and heavy with guilt, and I hadn’t slept until I’d gone up on deck in the night and drenched myself in icy seawater to freeze away all the thoughts in my head. I was dreading seeing Gerard again.

“Sleep well?” Dewees asked sweetly as he munched cheerfully on a biscuit.

I grunted and let my head rest on the table, face down.

Dewees patted my head. “You and Gerard still haven’t fucked yet?”

“No,” I muttered, the varnished wood of the table cold against my mouth as I spoke. I spat a little at the vile taste of a hundred rotten biscuits and lemons, then settled tiredly against the tabletop again. “Not that I’d want to,” I mumbled unconvincingly.

“Sure, Iero,” Dewees chuckled. “Anyway, it’s not like he’d ever fuckin’ let you. He needs you untouched for his precious little plot.”

I hummed half-heartedly in agreement, not really listening anymore. All I could seem to think about was what was going to happen when I next spoke to Gerard. I was scared, genuinely scared. I didn’t understand what I was feeling– it was just a spectacular mess of contradictions. I wanted to be close to him, but simultaneously I hated his guts; I wanted to touch him, but at the same time I was terrified of him touching me. I wanted him, but there was something ingrained in my mind telling me that it was just inherently immoral and sick. I felt like a child, lost and confused, completely isolated from anyone who would be willing to tell me the truth or explain things to me honestly. I just felt dumb.

\----

Gerard was looking at me again.

Staring at me, when he thought I couldn’t see, with something dark and raw in his eyes as he watched me fumble through the various maps scattered over the floor, and something like tiredness in the slump of his shoulders. We’d been fighting more lately, and I wasn’t sure why. It didn’t seem like much of a release for Gerard; he only ended up more tense and sharp after he’d knocked me down, despite how much control he had gained over our training sessions and the hostile stance he had taken on in regard to fighting– no matter who with. It made my stomach drop a little to think that I was no exception. I wondered absently if how viciously he was fighting was merely a cover-up for the fact that I was an exception, and I let myself briefly exploit the small rush I got from the delusion before shutting off the part of my mind that I’d noticed was perpetually wandering back to Gerard.

It turned out that this portion of my mind was actually, essentially, my entire mind, which made it dreadfully difficult to stop thinking about him, especially as we were talking privately more and more every day about Parade Island, and our planning had led to a lot of work in close proximity.

It shouldn’t have been difficult to listen as he spoke about such simple topics, but the flutter of his eyelashes when he squinted down at the map was alarmingly pretty, and the soft drawl of his voice would rush all through me like the tide below us, forcing all my muscles and brain cells out of operation. I cracked my knuckles one by one, flinching at each snapping sound and hoping pitifully that it would ground me somehow. It was a rather pathetic distraction from the damp heat of Gerard’s breath on my neck as he scanned through the paper I was holding from over my shoulder.

"I can't fucking focus with you breathing down my neck like that," I snapped, masking the way my voice shook slightly with hostility. Gerard backed away sharply, and when I turned to apologise there was a look of vulnerability about him, and instantly, I knew that I had been far too harsh. "I'm sorry, I–"

"No," Gerard stuttered. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have been so close." He turned his gaze downwards, his eyelashes shadowing his pale face. "Sorry," he mumbled. "Forgive me."

"Gerard, no, I'm sorry."

"Forgive me," he insisted.

My voice came out softer and more sensitive than I had intended when I spoke. I realised, with a flicker of distress, that my emotions were showing through. “Always,” I said, despite the faint promise the word seemed to hold.

Gerard too seemed to notice the odd rawness of my voice, and a feeble streak of something I didn’t recognise glassed over his eyes. Quietly, but frantically, I glossed over all the times I’d seen that emotion on his face before, but they all seemed to be isolated and unrelated instances. Nothing I could tie together.

The air between us was thick and clogged, and the both of us seemed to have got caught in a strain of confusion about the same thing. What was happening between us? I prayed that it was just something to do with this Parade Island shit.

As soon as Gerard left me, I started to sift through the papers scattered over the desk, searching for another ‘prophecy’, as such. Something that could justify what I was feeling, and explain how Gerard was acting.

I found nothing that was of any help to the predicament I was in, but I did come across something pretty significant: according to the map, we were scheduled for yet another run in with the Aurora– and it was looming fast. I didn’t tell Gerard. There was just something that made me feel uneasy about Gerard preparing for the battle.

\----

I smoothed my hands over my skin, watching the fresh water trickle down my calf in pale beads, slowing to circle my anklebone. The captain had gifted me with my first clean water ration in months, and I don’t think I’d ever been gladder to bathe.

The soft slosh of bathwater in the basin had become an unfamiliar sound to me. The grating roar of the waves on the ship's bows, the steady breathing of the tide and the heaving of the waves– that was home, but this was a holiday. I let myself get absorbed in the sound and the feeling of the water sliding over my body as I scrubbed off dirt and grime and splinters, and briefly, I wondered if Gerard's skin was as damaged as mine. I tried to recall all the fights where we'd touched, skin on skin, but Gerard liked to cover up a lot, and rarely wore less than a coat. I faintly remembered the delicate softness of his hands and wrists when I bandaged them up– like crushed velvet. I wondered if the rest of his body was that soft. I wondered if I would ever get to feel.

\----

The Aurora came swift and soon; stirring the ship awake in the dead of night and stabbing panic through my chest as I realised there were fairly incriminating maps and pages of symbols scattered over my floor. I stumbled out of my bunk and shoved them under my blanket, tensing at the crackling of the paper and hoping that it wouldn't lead anyone down here. Dewees was already gone, presumably partaking in the fight up on deck– but to my confusion, I couldn't hear any yells or swords clashing, only heavy, measured footsteps.

I felt sort of cold, and everything I could sense seemed to matter so much more now. Every little sound, and every change of wind. Every wave beating the side of the ship. I made my way up the stairs carefully, dagger looped through my belt and fingers pricking at all the frightening possibilities of what had happened. I wasn't even entirely sure it was actually the Aurora anymore.

The black sky almost swallowed me whole with vertigo when I stepped out onto the rain-slicked planks of the deck. The stars were teeth, and the wooden floor was a great wet tongue, and I felt like I was going to vomit because everyone in the crew was tied up with knives held to their throats.

Gerard's eyes caught mine, pleading and desperate, and my throat burned with an acidic sting at the thought of him actually being frightened– although I didn't know whether it was for my sake or his own.

"Hey there, kiddo," a cheery voice said. My eyes jolted around to find the source– and the smile on the culprit's face in light of the situation was gravely disturbing. His jaw was set and his eyes were glinting with something I should have found frightening, but for some peculiar reason, didn’t. There was an odd draw to the man. His eyes were deep set and hollow, with ash purple shadows, and a coarse trim of auburn facial hair covered his chin. "We know who you are, kid," he said, and I was taken aback by the kindness on his face. "You're the Scorpion Child, aren't you?"

I stood stark still, my mind too much of a hurricane to so much as think of a more intelligible response than a weak nod of the head.

"Hopefully, Way won't have fucked him yet," an unfamiliar curly haired man muttered to another Aurora member.

"He wouldn't do that," I snarled, suddenly surprised at actually finding my voice.

The man with curly hair turned to face me, standing in a naturally strong position with his feet shoulder's width apart and chest pushed out slightly. "What d'you think happened to the other kids that didn't work out for him? What d'you think he did with 'em then?"

I blanched, tensing and losing half my muscle tone simultaneously. "He wouldn't," I defended feebly.

Gerard's body twisted in his bounds like he was trying to reach me, but a knife was immediately pressed even more dangerously against the skin of his throat, and he reluctantly stilled. I knew he wanted to defend himself and insist otherwise of what the Aurora had implied; although he was gagged, I could see the despair in his eyes.

I turned sharply back to the man who'd confronted me. "What do you want?" I snapped.

"It's simple, and safe," the bearded man replied. "We just want you to come with us."

I raised an eyebrow. "Why the fuck would I wanna do that?"

"I already said." The man shrugged. "It's safe. And it's better than staying here with a manipulative asshole who's trying to brainwash you so he can use you as a fuckin' piece of equipment."

Gerard shook his head frantically, and the knife caught a little on his neck, sending a streak of blood down his throat to soak into his collar. That's when I saw– he was wearing his red tie. Michael's red tie.

A surge of feeling roared through my veins. "I'm not being used, you fucker," I spat.

The bearded man's eyes narrowed. "He's fucking manipulating you. Way is a liar, I swear to god. He does this with every kid he finds with any mark that looks remotely like a scorpion. Or even a fucking earwig."

At this point, the velvet drowning blackness of the sky was looking more and more appealing, and I decided that being eaten by the sky would most actually be a nice alternative to being a part of this conversation right now.

"You heard of Michael?" A gruff voice asked– another one of the Aurora's men. He must have seen the look of surprise on my face and taken it as a confirmation, because he continued almost immediately. "Way used to hit the poor kid. Sickening."

Sickening. That was the only word that could describe the thoughts in my head at that moment. I was frightened, and furious at being lied to. Gerard couldn't have been deceiving me the entire time, could he? How the fuck could I trust anyone on this ship at all? Every word that was spoken and every movement and every breath could have just been part of a plan.

"Come with us," the man with the beard said. "You'll be safe with us."

I didn't want to spend another second with someone despicable enough to do all the things Gerard had supposedly done, and in this deceiving and hateful world, I wasn't willing to take chances. That's what I'd learned, living with pirates– you set your own morals, and you fucking stick with them. There's no such thing as forgiving, not really. There's only what you are owed, and what you are not. And I didn't deserve this shit, this whole fucking ordeal, whether the lies were lies or not.

I left the Freighter, left my friends, and left Gerard. Determined not to look back, I climbed up on the rigging and swung swiftly above and across the water to board the Aurora with the other men, blanking out the way Gerard cried out for me as I left my second life behind to start my third.

\----

The air smelled like sickly blossoms, and the slick, dark walls of the Aurora were lit dimly by pale blue paper lanterns, dappled and torn like moonlight. The men all looked disturbingly clean: their clothes were well-fitted, their skin was of a healthy colour rather than pallid and tinged with grime, and some of them even had clean-shaven faces. Everything was out of place and I was already starting to regret the choice I’d made, but it was done now, set in place, a heavy brick weighing down my stomach.

Despite the unsettling mood of the ship distorting my image of the situation, the crew all seemed fairly ordinary and unthreatening. Captain Wentz looked a little tough, with tanned skin from the open sun, dark hair swept over his eyes, and a perpetually smug expression on his face, but he was hospitable enough.

I recognised a few men from fights in the past, and the captain introduced me to some of them. The bearded man who had confronted me back on the Freighter– the captain had called him Hurley– somehow seemed a lot less intimidating after putting a name to his face. Seeing him talk to other crew members, he was more shy and awkward than aggressive, and I wondered if the Aurora’s brutality and hate had just been a matter of perception, shifting easily the moment you accepted the view of another side.

Trohman, the man with curly hair who had been rather snarky towards Gerard, approached me when he saw me absently watching him talk with Hurley. “You made a smart choice, kid,” he said.

I nodded uneasily. I wasn’t sure I had. It had seemed a logical plan, in the moment– I didn’t want to lose my mind, and I didn’t want to stay in such close quarters with a man who had hurt his little brother– but it was only dawning on me now that these men had killed Michael, or at least tried to, and whether it had put him out of his misery or not, it was still horribly wrong. I was almost dizzy at how fucking stupid I’d been.

“Way’s not one you want to be sailing under,” Trohman said gruffly, shaking his head.

I opened my mouth to point out that Gerard wasn’t actually the captain, but a clamour of whistles and cheers interrupted my train of thought, and I found myself turning with all the other men to what inspired the racket: a young, beautiful woman making her way down the stairs from one of the cabins on the upper floor. Her dress was surprisingly classy, and not a single thing in her appearance looked amiss, despite the fact that she was leaving a man’s room in the late morning, and it was rather clear what had taken place in the night. I expected her to sidle up to one of the men and ask for her payment, but instead, she walked straight up to me, the steady click of her heels on the planks slowing as she came to a still before me. “So,” she drawled, “You’re the little castaway from the Freighter?”

I raised an eyebrow. “I’ll have you know I left of my own free will.”

She parted her lips slightly, with a soft intake of air. “You’re the Scorpion Boy.”

“Perhaps,” I said, carefully guarding my emotions and thoughts. I tried to remain closed and collected.

“I’m surprised Way let you escape.”

My poised demeanour slipped briefly, but I held myself steady. “He didn’t. He was gagged and bound.” I tried not to flinch at the thought of Gerard struggling to reach me, left weak and helpless and bleeding. “What’s it to you, anyway?” I asked curtly.

She cocked her hip. “You’re the first kid we’ve actually managed to save from him.”

My mind flashed back to Michael. If the Aurora didn’t consider killing him putting him out of his misery, why the fuck did they feel they had the right to? I was about to confront the woman, but then it occurred to me that she was a prostitute, and most likely not privy to the innermost workings of the captain’s mind. “And what do you intend to do with me now that you’ve allegedly saved me?”

She smiled at that. “What d’you want to do? Where d’you want to go?”

I wanted to go back to the Freighter. I wanted to tell Gerard that I was sorry, I wanted to hold him and tell him that I don’t know why I did what I did– I was just scared and I regretted everything. “I want a drink,” I said pathetically.

The girl snapped her fingers with a swift breeze of flower scented warmth, and one of the men immediately scuttled away to fetch me some rum. I had forgotten the compelling effect women could have on men after so long at sea. It was rather amusing to witness, in all honesty, but I couldn’t escape the niggling confusion as to why I was immune.

Shortly, I was handed a bottle, and I downed it in about four gulps. I had hoped that it would give me the courage to say that what I really wanted was to go back to the place I had just been rescued from, but I did not feel any more courageous in the slightest. In fact, I was just a little more on edge, because all I could think about was the way that Gerard’s mouth had tasted like rum, and that he was probably fucked out of his mind right now because of me.

“C’mon, kid,” the girl said. “We don’t have all day.”

Hurley perked up. “Actually, we do,” he said brightly, momentarily reminding me of Dewees. “The captain said we’re far ahead on course, so–”

“It’s an expression, Andy,” the woman said exasperatedly.

“Sorry, Lise, I was just telling it as it is.”

“Don’t fuckin’ call me that. My name’s Lisa.”

“The captain calls you Lise,” Hurley defended.

Lisa flushed pink. “The captain is an exception.”

I raised my eyebrows and distanced myself from the conversation, feeling a little like I was intruding, and knowing I’d be far better off making myself invisible. I twisted my hands together awkwardly, Gerard in my mind and under my skin. I hadn’t meant to speak, but the words had just bubbled over before I could stop them. “I wanna go back,” I blurted out.

Lisa turned around. “Sorry?”

“I want to go back to the Freighter,” I said, trying not to let my voice waver. “Please.”

Lisa’s eyes sharpened. “You want to go back to that monster?”

“He’s not a fucking monster,” I snapped. “What have you all got against him?”

“He hit one of his kids and killed the other,” one man said gruffly.

My head was spinning. “Gerard doesn’t have kids,” I said shakily. He couldn’t have– he would never have hurt them.

“Gerard?” Lisa repeated, sounding lost and a little plaintive. “Gerard’s dead. He died just after we rescued Michael.”

“Gerard’s not fucking dead, he’s back on the Freighter! You fucking spoke to him, how could you think–” I dug my fingers into my hair with a growl and tugged on it in exasperation. “Michael’s the one who’s dead. You fucking killed him.”

Lisa had paled to the point where she looked like she was made of porcelain. “Gerard’s alive?” she asked weakly.

“Yes,” I insisted. “Hurley, you fuckin’ spoke to him. We were just talking about him– how could you think Way meant anything but Gerard?”

“Donald Way,” the captain said. “We were talking about the captain of the Freighter.”

I shook my head and braced myself against the railings, furious and aching and confused. “Bryar’s the captain of the Freighter. Gerard is first mate– not captain– and he’s not fuckin’ dead.”

“Gerard is Donald’s son,” Captain Wentz said. “I thought– Bryar was first mate.”

“Look, I don’t know where you get your information, but all your facts are fucking wrong. When Gerard’s father died, Bryar took over as captain, with Gerard as first mate. Nobody’s fuckin’ undead. We’re not working with a ghost crew here.”

“Gerard’s alive,” Lisa said quietly. “Oh.”

“Just fucking take me back,” I muttered. “I’m not spending another minute with you fucking lunatics.”

Captain Wentz obliged, blindly turning the wheel and staring ahead, a rather bewildered look on his face. Of course, everything had just been a matter of perception, and it had all shifted the moment the Aurora took the time to listen to the truth.

I slumped back against the railings, letting my head hit the wood and loll to the side to rest on my shoulder. I was fucking exhausted, mentally and physically, and I wanted to go back and alter every single action I’d done in the past day. I wished that I could get a new ration of water from Captain Bryar, and drench myself in it, and scrape away all my regrets and guilt under the spray.

I wanted to close my eyes so I could block out this whole situation, but Lisa had sunk down beside me, and suddenly I was back in Belleville, and it was terribly improper to turn your back on a lady. I lifted my head a little to look at her. “You’ll crease your dress,” I murmured.

“I have lots of dresses,” she shrugged, adjusting the scarlet sash around her waist.

I sighed and rolled my head back, the dull splinters in the wood catching on my hair. Lisa didn’t lean back. Her hair was far too fragile and glossy to be mussed in such early hours of the morning. I wondered how much time she spent brushing it to smooth it down so neatly.

“What’s he like?” she asked softly after a while, breaking the silence.

I shifted so I could look up at her. “Gerard?”

She nodded shyly.

I shook my head, a small smile appearing on my face. I didn’t ask why she wanted to know; the soft look in her eyes was enough to tell me she meant no harm. “Honestly, he’s fucking mad,” I laughed. “But he’s brilliant. He fights like no one you’ll ever see, and he’s never told me a lie. He’ll play you dirty, but he’ll never lie.”

Lisa smiled a little. “Did he ever talk about Michael?”

I was taken aback slightly at how personal the question was, but nodded nonetheless. “He loved his brother,” I murmured. “A whole lot.”

Lisa didn’t reply to that. “We didn’t kill Michael, you know,” she said after a while, her voice quiet. “He was happy here for years. This crew fuckin’ raised the kid. But he got real sick, and he– he wasn’t right in the head after that. And then a few weeks later, he just. Died.”

“Oh,” I said, my mouth dry. This changed everything. Fuck.

“We thought Donald had killed Gerard,” Lisa said. “Michael was distraught when he found out. He loved his brother too. More than anything.”

My chest was burning, and I felt like all my blood was streaming down the insides of my lungs, choking up my throat when I tried to breathe in. “I’ll tell him that,” I managed. I was bearing too much weight on my shoulders, too much guilt in my chest, and too much hurt in my heart. All I wanted was to be close to Gerard again. To hold him and to have him hold me, and for every dark thought in my head to be washed away by the warmth of his skin and the smell of his hair. All I wanted was my home, the place I loved the most– and only now the startling realisation was beginning to dawn on me that it was with Gerard.

\----

Lisa seemed far too eager to make herself scarce before we crossed the Freighter on the seas, but I made no complaint. It was kind of a relief to get some space after everything that had happened, everything I'd found out.

I needed to think about what the fuck I was going to tell Gerard. He was going to be a fucking mess, and it was going to be my fault.

A little part of me was far more scared for his reaction that it should have been– but it was for absolutely nothing; as soon as I passed from the rigging of the Aurora to the Freighter, he was clutching me to his chest like a lost teddy bear, laughing breathlessly into my hair, despite the fact that he was clearly quite distressed. I laughed shakily myself, scratching at the nape of his neck almost habitually. He nuzzled into my chest and I rested my cheek on his hair, and to my surprise, he didn't even smell faintly of alcohol, nor tobacco.

"I'm sorry," I said as the Aurora disappeared into the blurred waves.

"They were liars," Gerard mumbled. "I would never hurt Mikey."

"I know," I said softly, running a hand through his hair. "I know. They thought you were someone else– it's a whole long story, Gerard, but– they didn't murder your brother."

Gerard froze and a small tremor shook his whole body. "Michael's–"

"No," I said quickly, guilty that I'd led him on. "He just got very sick. But he was happy. He had a good life there. They meant to help him, and they did."

"They still took him!" Gerard cried. "It's not even remotely ethical, I–"

"Your father was hurting him, Gerard."

Gerard stuttered and halted.

"They saved him."

Gerard slumped slightly in my arms. "Oh."

"Yeah," I muttered.

"Oh."

\----

"Why?" Gerard's voice was crisp and cold in the dark night air.

I ran my fingertips over the raw silver edge of my dagger. We had planned to fight, but had succumbed to fatigue and closeness and just sat together on deck, underneath the stars.

"Why did you go?"

"I don't know," I whispered. "There's just something wrong with everything that's happening right now. Something wrong with me. I feel–" The skin of my hand caught on the blade, and I twitched as it drew blood. "I feel… God, I don't know."

"Like something is eating away at your chest from the inside," Gerard said. "Cold and warm and sort of broken up."

In my hesitation, the knife caught slightly deeper on my knuckle, but this time I did not flinch as a smudge of blood, dark and blue tinged in evening light, slid down into the crease of my palm. "Yes," I said, my voice dry. "Yes."

Gerald sunk back against the rails, and let his eyes fall shut. "Scorpion boy," he muttered. "Mine."

I curled my hand into a fist, and a drop of blood squeezed between my fingers, slick and hot. "I might be on your side," I said in a low voice, "But that doesn't make me yours."

Gerard tensed. "How– how am I supposed to go to Parade Island without you?"

"No– I'm still on your side, Gerard," I stressed, clutching at his arm. "You need to understand that. I'm here for you, but you don't have full control over me."

"You're still going with me?" His voice was tentative.

"Of course, Gerard." I shoved his shoulder a little. "You dumbass."

He laughed, and wiped the bloodstain I'd left on his sleeve onto the inside of his coat.

"I'm always fuckin' here for you," I said.

Gerard nudged my cheek gently and I scuffed my heel on the floor. "My pretty boy," he mumbled.

"Okay," I laughed softly. "I'll let you have that."

"C'mon then, sugar," Gerard said playfully. "Reconciliation fight?"

Before I had time to give him a shove he had pushed me backwards and pinned me to the floor, and the dagger had slipped from my grasp. Briefly I was in a state of shock, and Gerard laughed, but the smirk fell from his when I grasped his wrists and pushed him onto his side, breaking his steady stature. I laughed breathlessly and pressed his hands down, then pinned him under my chest and grasped for the dagger.

Gerard's cold hands were shaking under mine as the warmth from my body bled into his, and his heart was fluttering like a little dove. His chest rose and fell rapidly with his heavy breaths, and without even thinking, I clutched at his one hand, and lightly pressed the blade of the dagger into the palm of the other. A little gasp was torn from his throat, and he grasped at my hip– but he didn't try and push me away, he was trying to pull me closer.

This wasn't a fight. This was something else.

I let out a shaky breath, and my chest fell against his. He slid his hand up my side and tangled his fingers in my hair, clutching at the nape of my neck, and I could feel the soft slide of droplets of blood from his hand trailing down the back of my shirt. I shivered, and Gerard held me closer, murmuring my name into my shoulder. He ran his fingers through my hair warmly, and spoke with a quiet, rough voice. "Mine."

The dagger slipped from my hand with a blank clatter. I couldn't disagree with Gerard, despite the fact that I wanted to. The draw of the heat from his body and the sound of his voice was enough to flatten any moral objections I had.

A streak of something vulnerable flashed briefly through Gerard's eyes, and then without a pause he was too close, his mouth warm and careful on mine, and his fingers catching in my hair. I fumbled to grip at his waist with my free hand, and supported my weight with the other, my fingers splayed out on the wooden floor and my elbow straining from the pressure.

Gerard’s lips were chapped from the dry sea air, but his mouth was damp and hot from the kiss, and the taste of his skin– not the lingering residue of alcohol or tobacco, just his natural taste– was fucking heady, and overwhelmed any awkwardness from the position we were in. My nose brushed against the side of his face when I tried to lean in further and Gerard laughed just a little, and it reverberated in his chest and against mine. His nose bumped against my cheek and I laughed too– a warm laugh; one I knew was rare for me, and only surfaced when I was with Gerard.

I shifted so I could lie beside him, my bones pressed into the wooden floor, but my hands free to touch. His hips were soft again; he had put back on the precious baby fat he'd held so long ago. He nosed at my neck and his hair pressed against the side of my face, stringy and unwashed and smelling like dried blood, and I just fucking loved him.

"Gerard," I murmured, brushing my knuckles lightly over his jaw. I knew the sound of my voice was broadcasting my emotions and leaving me far too easy to read: I was confessing.

Gerard shivered a little. "Frank," he mumbled back, his voice warm and muffled in my neck. A confirmation. It said enough.

\----

I wasn't Gerard's.

I wasn't his, and I was never going to be, but I wasn't yet willing to disturb his slightly distorted image of our odd relationship. Some vague force compelled me to preserve his serene state of mind as far as possible until I confronted him– but I doubted that that would be too far in the future. Even more did I doubt that the power equilibrium would last through Gerard's eyes peeling back to discover the revelation that I was actually a human being of my own. (Though there were a fair few stages of hideous disaster between Gerard's cluelessness and blessed enlightenment.)

\----

A slash of a knife on my sleeve, tearing the fabric and searing a bloody slice into my arm. Gerard's burning eyes, cauterising the wound, and forcing it to split further open at the same time. It all came in flashes.

"You're getting fucking obsessed, Gerard," I hissed. "You have no fucking right to claim ownership over me."

"I need you, please–"

"You need trust. You need to understand–"

Gerard grasped at my throat and I choked on a growl. "You need to understand that I fucking need you, Frank," he snarled as I fought to pry away his hands.

"I trust you," I said in a low voice, "And you need to learn to fucking appreciate it and trust me back. For god's sake, I'm not going to help you if you're going to keep being such a bastard."

Gerard looked deadened, just staring at me for a moment. Then he punched me in the face.

\----

Gerard's insults and sharp words were softer than his apologies. His apologies were like acid; so desperate, tasting so rancid on his mouth when he kissed me again.

He offered to let me punch him in return, and I told him I wasn't sure he'd quite grasped the definition of forgiveness yet. He clutched at my hands, and I twisted my fingers so I could press into the jagged cut on his palm. He tensed with a sharp intake of breath, and I just laughed: this was the definition of forgiveness.

"Please don't leave me," Gerard said. "Please."

"You're a volatile fucker for someone so clueless, you know." I flicked some of his hair out of his eyes, sprinkling a little blood over his face.

"Yes," he muttered sullenly. "I know."

"But in a kind of good way," I mused. "Most of the time."

Gerard's eyes followed mine, like he was tracking me, trying to read me. "I'm sorry." He touched the bruise on my cheekbone. "I don't know what's wrong with me, I'm just–"

"You're just you."

Gerard winced.

"And that's okay," I said. "You're okay. A little bit wrecked, sure, but we all are, in our own special ways."

A little sigh warmed my neck and Gerard's fingertips found the line of my jaw where he had scratched at my skin with his dagger.

"Don't get too close, boy," I murmured. "I bite."

"The tongue of forgiveness is sharp, huh?"

"Sharper than your little knife," I said. "I could take you."

Gerard huffed a laugh against my shoulder. "Sure you could, pretty boy."

I poked at his ribs. "You wanna go?"

"We both know how it's gonna end," he teased.

I held Gerard to my chest and took a step forwards, pushing him slightly off balance so I could hold him tighter. "With you on the floor," I murmured in his ear, and his breath shook.

"No," he said quietly. "I know where this really ends."

I sighed, and closed my eyes. "Parade Island," I muttered.

A low hum resonated in Gerard's chest. "Parade Island."

"Let's hope I manage to keep a grasp on my sanity."

The ends of Gerard's hair brushed my shoulder. "Thank you," he said. "Pretty boy."

\----

The shriek of the ship's bows on the warding jagged rocks pierced the air, pierced our clear path to the cove of Parade Island. To my great despair, and Gerard's great joy, we were almost at the peak of this alleged adventure, and it looked like we were really going to make it.

I probably should have been focused on the fact that if this went wrong I would lose my mind forever, but the predominant thought in my head was merely a revelation on whether Gerard had been a virgin before Ryan or not. It had never really occurred to me; he'd always seemed so sure of himself around taboo subjects– but perhaps it had been a cover.

Ryan always seemed able to reign this quiet dominant force over Gerard, and despite Gerard's inescapable conceitedness, it was always easy to distinguish which way the power dynamic in their relationship leant. Gerard was confident, granted, but he was clumsy. He pandered to Ryan, like Ryan was a new toy he wasn't entirely sure how to use, but was intent on enjoying anyway.

Had Gerard ever been with a woman? I doubted it. It was something you could just see on a man, and not only from the traces of rouge left on his collar. You could see the way they revered each small touch from a lady, like every little piece of contact was a memory of something soft and wonderful and womanly. I had never really understood this. Emily had been beautiful and soft and womanly, and supposedly everything a man could want, but her touch did not leave an imprint under my skin, and the way she smelled did not make my heart warm, but conversely made me seize up into a terrible cough: the fashion at the time had been to cake yourself in perfume and lead and powder until you looked like an oversized cream puff, and the concoction of chemicals did my weak lungs little good.

It was clear that Gerard too did not revere a lady's touch as some did. It seemed like he appreciated it, but more out of some kind of mutual respect rather than delicate adoration. He identified with the women we met at ports, in a sort of distant, hopeless way that evolved (or devolved) into a sad sense of self-preservation after Ryan died. (Most of the women we were in contact with– if not all– were prostitutes, and unfortunately, the entire crew's love of sex was an inevitable draw for them to keep returning, leaving Gerard to gaze into the horizon to the faded sound of the girls' giggles and dramatically reminisce, like he was in a Jane Austen novel. He would most certainly be Heathcliff, skulking about the world. I begrudgingly supposed that that made me Elizabeth.)

As we rowed sluggishly through the silt, dark brown water spilling down the oars and down our hands, it started to dawn on me how extremely serious this extremely serious matter actually was. I hadn't believed it for what it was, just followed the breadcrumb trail Gerard had left for me and been taken in by it all. Maybe I was going to go mad.

Perhaps– no, I couldn't be. Could I? Perhaps I was already mad, whether the gates would open for me or not. And perhaps I didn't care.

\----

It was really rather disconcerting how easy it was to get to the cove of Parade Island once we'd cleared the rocks. There were no other obstacles, or traps, or warnings to deter us. Nothing but a great wrought iron gate, suffocated with wildflowers and bedded under layers of trodden sand, not hidden at all but clear and stark against the oddly sweet aloofness of the rest of the island. Behind the gates lay a tangled jungle of untouched plants, untamed vines and unconstrained trees. Human hands had yet to mangle this guarded sanctuary.

The air of nervous joy searing in a heavy aura around Gerard pained me just a little. I knew it should have lifted me to see him happy, to know that I was doing this for him, but I just felt wrong. If this failed, then not only would he have lost the chance to see his brother again, but he would have lost me too. I knew that Michael would be a much more devastating and higher regarded loss, and I knew that it would most likely destroy Gerard completely if his certainly was crumbled into dust yet again, and I didn't want to be a part of that. I didn't want to be at fault, whether I'd actually be able to comprehend that with my crumpled mind or not.

But Gerard had loved his brother so much. I couldn't imagine how it must feel to lose someone so close to you as a child. Of course I would try, at least try.

"Frank." Dewees' voice. I turned around, the wind rushing in my ears and Dewees rushing on his feet to reach me. His boots ploughed through the sand, spraying the hem of his coat with murky beige, and his hair was plastered down over his forehead, damp with sea spray. "Frank, wait." He seemed to pause, but perhaps it was just my mind pausing for my benefit, to give me a brief moment to prepare myself for what the words Dewees was about to speak. "Don't do it."

"What?"

Dewees made a strangled groaning noise in frustration. "You're going to lose your mind, you fucker."

"But Gerard–"

"Gerard's having second thoughts. I think he's gradually regaining sanity. He doesn't think he wants you to do this."

"Dewees, his brother–"

"His brother is not here. You are, and you're real, and he wants you with him."

I sighed exasperatedly. "Then why doesn't he just tell me this himself? I swear to god, if you're making this up–"

"He knows you're still going to do it, whether he asks you to or not."

I closed my mouth at that. How could he know that when I wasn't even sure of it?

Then again. I supposed it wasn't difficult to deduce. The chance of getting Michael back would make Gerard far happier than I ever could alone.

"Surely just a small part of him still wants me to do it," I defended quietly.

Dewees shook his head. His eyes looked blunt and dulled. He knew I wasn't going to back down.

"Just a really really small part?"

That didn't even stir a response. My eyes caught on Gerard, tiptoeing over the sandy rocks by a flat grey cliff face. A few lilac wildflowers grew in the silver dust at the base of the low cliff, and Gerard knelt down to admire them. I tore my eyes away.

The gates loomed over me before I could really register that I'd walked over to them. The sun streamed across the island, bleaching the ground and spiralling dark, trembling shadows over the white sand, over my hands, pallid in the faint blue glow of the ocean.

I didn't do anything. I didn't know what I was actually supposed to do. I merely looked up, and the gates were parting with a rusty screeching sound, tearing deep trails in the sand and shredding the rocks scattered in their path.

Everyone's eyes were on me in less than a second. The shriek of the corroded metal gates could have turned the heads of the entirety of a whole fucking armada. Everybody watched me, but no one followed as I took a few cautious steps into the wilderness.

And then there was just a very prominent sense of waiting. Something was supposed to happen now, wasn't it? I was supposed to go mad. Or if I was really the scorpion child, Gerard was supposed to follow me in here– but he stayed balanced on the rocks, his hand still flat on the grey washed cliff face. I took a few steps further in, treading lightly as not to disturb the delicate balance of nature in this overwhelmingly solid place.

There, ahead of me, was the fountain. White marble, with clear translucent trickles of liquid spilling from the ornately carved tiers of bowls. It couldn't be water flowing from it, it was too... ethereal. It set my teeth on edge, and I ventured no further into the labyrinth of tangled dark flowers. I stared at the fountain, transfixed by the eerily soft stream of the liquid over the dense marble, so distracted by the faintly otherworldly glow that I didn't notice Gerard treading through the plants and appearing quietly at my side. "It's beautiful," he said, and his voice threaded warmly into my head and washed out the cold trickle of the fountain.

"It's ugly," I said. "This whole place is sickeningly sweet." I gestured vaguely with my hands. "It’s all– cloying. I feel like I’m choking."

Gerard sniffed. "It just smells like flowers."

He didn't understand. I wondered if he was too preoccupied with the possibility of seeing Michael again to notice how distorted this whole place felt. "I don't mean the smell."

Gerard brushed off my pedantic complaints, and bent down to dip his hand in the fountain. The liquid eased between his fingers, almost in strands. It didn’t look very much like water. It looked more like it was masquerading as water. "D'you think I'm supposed to drink it?"

"I don't know, Gerard," I said, scrubbing my face in my hands. "You're the one who knows everything about this place."

Gerard paused. He cupped his hands in the water and brought it to his mouth to take a sip. The liquid squirmed in his hands and edged away, as if it was magnetically repelled from his lips.

I scrunched my face up. "What the fuck was that?"

Gerard looked equally as baffled. He shook his head dumbly.

I knelt down beside him and reached into the large marble basin to cupped a little of the liquid in my hands. It felt like water. It looked like water, too, against my skin. But not against Gerard's, and not against the stone basin. "Wait," I said. Gerard's eyes locked on mine. "Drink it out of my hands."

He sighed, and rolled his eyes. "That's stupid. How exactly is that going to be any different from drinking out of my own hands?"

"Look. C'mon, look. The water looks different in my hands."

"You're just being absurd now."

"This whole ordeal is absurd. Don't tell me you're not willing to go just a tiny bit further. What's the worst that could happen?"

Gerard looked at me, his face tired, and slumped a little. "Fine." He leaned down to take a sip of the water from my outstretched cupped hands, and the liquid stayed in place. It didn't shy away. Gerard hesitantly drank a little, and then paused. "Now what?"

I blinked. "I don't know."

"I just wanna fucking see my brother. How– what the fuck's supposed to happen now?"

We hadn't thought this far ahead. "I have no idea," I mumbled, my voice low. "I'm sorry."

"What for?" Gerard asked quietly. "You've done far more than I asked."

I wasn't sure what to say, so I parted my fingers and let the water fall back into the basin, then rested my hands on Gerard's hips and brought our mouths together. My hands were damp, and the water soaked through his coat, and Gerard's mouth was damp, and his warmth soaked into my body.

Gerard was soft and resigned and almost too still, like the eerily deathly waters of the fountain, and I couldn't help but feel I'd let him down. I'd unlocked the gates without even meaning to through some bizarre, mysterious force, but I hadn't changed anything. I hadn't solved anything. I had been useless, raising his hopes and then so blatantly dropping them. Perhaps I wasn’t the Scorpion Child after all, and I only qualified to open the gates, not to grant the wishes of the men who entered.

We returned to the ship in a rather sad and sorry state, and all retired to our rooms. My spurring and reeling thoughts kept me restless through the night, and I started to wonder if things on the ship had ever been this bleak. It could have been far worse though, I supposed. At least I hadn’t lost my mind.

\----

The sound of heavy and brazen footsteps on the deck above pulled me from my sleep in a state of mild panic. There were far too many men up there for such an early hour. Faintly, I heard blades cross with a resonating ring, and I scrambled out of my bunk and towards the noise with blatant abandon. A fight was the last thing Gerard needed right now– it was the last thing any of us needed right now.

The moment I set foot on the deck, Dewees launched himself in front of me, accidentally crashing our skulls together and almost knocking me back down the steps. He babbled frantically, appearing to be attempting to form sentences. Although o couldn't actually distinguish any particular words, it wasn't difficult to form a vague understanding of the situation. The Aurora was back, and they were fucking mad.

The scene was carnage, snapping movements and sharp turns, fighting colder than anything I'd seen before. I glanced anxiously around for Gerard, quietly hoping that he was still in his cabin, but to my dismay, I found him growling at a man I vaguely remembered being called Trohman, their swords grating against each other in an ineffable struggle for superiority. This fight was not about killing, it appeared, or even doing damage to the opposing side. It was about pride, something I'd never witnessed a pirate paying mind to in all my life. The hierarchy was a purposeless social construct, created for the benefit of proper and civil citizens to make them feel ever more superior. It was made for respected citizens, not us. Not pirates. We were all down in the dregs together.

I glanced behind me to where Dewees had been standing, intending to ask how the fight had started since I thought we were at a truce with the Aurora, but he had already propelled himself across the deck to ram into anyone who wasn't participating enough. I supposed that he'd expected me to throw myself into the heat of the battle immediately, without any forethought, as he hadn't so much as nudged me to join in.

I was suddenly far more conscious of my surroundings. Join in. You don't 'join in' a fight, like Dewees was urging the crew to– you 'join in' a game of poker, or a competition. And that's what this was– some kind of twisted psychological game. A terribly narcissistic struggle for dominance in the hierarchy. I'd had a cursory knowledge of the situation from moments after I arrived, but I hadn't realised how deep set this feud was. Fuck.

I pushed through the thick mesh of grubby, greasy men– who were, for once, not roaring at one another, but only glaring and sharpening their swords on one another's limbs– and scrambled to reach Gerard, to force him back to his bunk. Whether he was physically strong enough or not, he was a far fucking cry from emotionally prepared. He was at the furthest part of the deck from the steps, and of fucking course, he was fighting the fucking captain, blood splattered down the side of his face and his bruised knuckles almost white from clutching Wentz's throat. And of course, he had seen me, and of course, the moment I stepped in to prise him off Wentz, he whipped around and dashed through a clump of men in a fistfight to where I couldn't reach him.

I struggled through the mass of people and weapons and blood, only to be dragged back my a bony hand grasping my wrist tightly. I spun around, poised to snap the arm of whoever had pulled me back, but was met with Lisa's familiar feminine face, and I froze. I had intended to ask her what she was doing in the middle of a fight, but all I managed was a splutter.

"Frank," she hissed. "What the hell is happening?"

"What are you doing here?" I squeaked. "You'll get hurt."

Lisa laughed, high and breathy. "No, I won't."

"How are you even alive? What are you doing?"

"I'm fighting," she said, teeth gritted as she sharply kicked Dewees in the shin. Clearly, he didn't expect it to hurt nearly as much as it did, and he made a high pitched cry and clutched at his leg.

"Why?" Dewees cried, wheezing. "Jesus, that hurt."

"She's with the Aurora," I said dismissively, and Dewees' eyes bugged. I turned back to Lisa. "Why are you here?"

"Why are we fighting?" she retorted. "We didn't come here for a fight."

"You never come here for anything but a fight," Dewees said incredulously.

"We came here to talk, and all of a sudden we're being fucking attacked."

Even I was taken aback at that. I had never heard a lady swear before, especially not one as sleek and elegant as Lisa. "I don't understand," I said.

Lisa didn't reply though; she was already darting through the masses of men towards Gerard, and I barely had time to stumble after her before Dewees thundered across the deck in Gerard's direction, almost knocking me over in the process. As expected, the moment Lisa reached Gerard, he spun around and held his sword with the blade towards her, poised to attack. She didn't try to fight him though, to my surprise. She didn't even try to defend herself.

"What the fuck's she doing?" Dewees asked.

I didn't reply. I just stared.

"Gerard," Lisa said. Her voice was low and soft, and she looked at Gerard like he was a kind old friend.

Gerard narrowed his eyes and stepped towards her, his grip on his sword steady.

"Gerard, it's– it's me."

Gerard looked as irritated from being in the dark as I felt. Did Lisa mean that she was the scorpion child? That all along, the Aurora had been sheltering her? Perhaps they had come to share their wishes at the fountain with us, now that we were mutual non-enemies.

"It's Michael," Lisa said in a soft voice, scuffing her heeled boot on the floor.

On second thoughts, perhaps they had not come to share their wishes at the fountain with us.

\----

"Gerard, it's– it's me,” Lisa said, scuffing her heeled boot on the floor. “It's Michael.”

Gerard looked distraught and a tiny bit furious. "How do you know Michael's name?" he snarled.

"It's me," she said quietly. "I'm your brother– I mean, not anymore, I suppose, but–"

"My brother is fucking dead," Gerard said in a low voice.

"I thought you were dead," Lisa said, even quieter and more timidly than before. The fighting around us had slowed, and only the silent shrill roaring of the sea pierced the air. Everyone was still. "I thought father had killed you."

"Father is dead," Gerard said, voice shaking. "Father is dead, and Michael is dead, and this is sickly."

"It's not sickly," Lisa said sharply. "Father never liked that I was a girl– but nobody on the Aurora cared." She tugged at the frayed edges of the silken scarlet sash around her waist. Her words were suddenly softer. "I never tried to find you because– because I hadn't even known you were still alive."

Gerard's face looked plastered white. His features looked as if they had been delicately painted on with a fine brush in vivid colours, like a porcelain doll, positioned in an expression of slight terror. He reached up to his collar and his hand slid down to trace the frayed silk edge of his tie. It took me a few moments to realise that his tie matched Lisa’s sash. "Michael?" Gerard said in a small voice.

"Gee," Lisa (Michael?) said softly in response.

I must admit, I was so startled by the revelation that Lisa was in fact Gerard's brother that I couldn't help myself from simply gaping. Gerard’s face was in a similarly hopeless state, eyes wide and mouth hanging despairingly open with no words coming out. "You're–" he managed. “Fuck.”

Lisa (Michael?) anxiously smoothed down her dress. “Gerard, I am–”

“A woman?” Gerard spluttered.

“I was going to say alive, but yes,” Lisa said. “Inside. I just. I have the wrong body.”

“So you fucking faked your death to go and live as a woman?”

“No!” Lisa cried, looking desperate, fucking desperate for Gerard to understand. “The Aurora found me in the market in the middle of the night– I had tried to run away. I told them what was happening with Father– he fucking hated me, Gerard. God, you have no idea.”

“He was hitting her every night,” Captain Wentz insisted, stepping closer to Lisa. “We couldn’t just leave her.”

“I never wanted to abandon you, Gee,” Lisa croaked, tearing up. “He was just–”

“It’s okay,” Gerard said, stepping forward carefully. “Mikes, it’s okay. Fuck, I mean, Lisa?”

Lisa nodded shakily, and shuffled into Wentz’s arms. She was taller than him, especially with her heeled boots, but she clung to him like a child– like the way Gerard clung to me. Oh.

“So do you believe me?” Lisa asked, after moments of silence. She stood tall again, no longer crowded into Wentz’s chest. He looked a little empty without her.

Gerard looked incredibly fragile as he took another step towards Lisa, but I took it to mean that he did in fact believe her despite the uncertainty he was projecting when he took her in his arms and hugged her.

“Shit!” Dewees said loudly, after a few moments. Everybody turned to him, Lisa and Gerard looking slightly disgruntled from being interrupted. “Sorry,” Dewees continued, “It’s just– Gerard, you found your brother. That means that whatever shit happened at Parade Island worked. Frank was the scorpion kid. The whole deal.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Shit.”

Gerard didn’t look nearly as conceited as I was expecting when I glanced at him to gauge his reaction. He just looked happy. He squeezed Lisa tighter with a laugh, and she smiled and buried her face in his shoulder, clutching at the lapels of his jacket.

“I knew I was right to trust your judgement, Way,” Captain Bryar said, eyeing Dewees. Bryar had never explicitly commented on Dewees’ doubts in Gerard, although he had been very clear of his irritation with Patrick for second guessing him. I supposed it was because he held more respect for Dewees, but then I realised how preposterous that sounded (‘Dewees’ and ‘respect’ did not go together) and decided that it was probably because Dewees would have been more annoying when being reprimanded while Patrick just sighed and shuffled away.

Dewees widened his eyes innocently in response to the look the captain had shot him. “It was only logical to assume that Frank’s mark was a coincidence, especially after all the other coincidences that didn’t work out.”

Captain Bryar slumped a little in defeat (Dewees did make a fair point), and Gerard huffed, but shook his head fondly all the same, then released Lisa and put his hand on my waist. The gesture was strikingly intimate, and in that moment a disturbing thought came to me: were Gerard and I courting? I didn’t know what sort of a name we could give the relationship dynamic that we shared. I wondered what father would think; what Lady Emily would think. Although, given some thought, both father and Miss Emily would most likely be far more concerned about me cavorting with pirates than falling in love with a man.

Well, something to that effect at least. I wondered for a moment whether I was actually in love with Gerard. Probably not, but I knew that that was how father would see it. As some sickly obsession with something I had never even been allowed to think about as a child. I had not even learned the word for such relationships until Dewees told me.

There was a reason I was sheltered from these things as a boy. They were terrible things. They were terrible people. And now I was one of them. I was a disgrace to my family’s good name, a disgrace to my town. Father would be so horribly ashamed of me.

I couldn’t imagine how furious Lisa’s father must have been with her. I could, however, imagine how far he would have gone when he lashed out at her, but I certainly didn’t want to think about that. I was glad Lisa was safe now, happy, and with her brother. I was glad I was here, in this disgraceful life, with my disgraceful friends. And my disgraceful Gerard.

\----

“You thought I was a what?” Lisa asked, eyes wide and eyebrows threatening to disappear into her hair.

“I thought you were a hooker.” I shrugged. The majority of the Aurora’s crew had shuffled down below deck with us, and while a few men sat on the floor tending to their injuries, Lisa and I were talking quite amicably, like we hadn’t just been trying to kill each other’s friends.

Lisa spluttered, rather horrified at my observation. “Do I look like a hooker?”

I shrugged again. “Nothing wrong with being a hooker,” I mused. “Such nice people.”

“But–” Lisa struggled to grasp for words. “What is it about me that suggested that I was a hooker?”

“You were a female,” I stated. “On a boat.”

The furrow in Lisa’s brow deepened, and she stuck out her neck a little, as if leaning towards me would somehow grant her access to my mind. She seemed to be having immense difficulty understanding why the whole woman-on-a-boat thing was such a significant factor in the hooker illusion.

“Women don’t go on boats, Lisa,” I said. “Unless they’re hookers.” I looked at her, leaning down a bit to study her face. She wasn’t having much of a reaction.

“Oh,” she said after a while. “I suppose that’s why every crew we fought looked at me kind of strangely. They knew I didn’t belong even before I did.”

“No, no,” Captain Wentz said, materialising from behind Lisa and gently resting his hand on her shoulder. “I’m certain that it was because you were just so ridiculously beautiful that they couldn’t look away.”

Lisa flushed red, and shrugged off Wentz’s hand to nuzzle the side of his face, trying to hide her smile and failing. “Peter,” she laughed softly, and he tucked her hair back behind her ear.

There was no doubt that Lisa and Wentz were courting. I still had yet to figure out where I stood with Gerard, though. My disgraceful Gerard. (Yes. I was really starting to grow very attached to that name.)

\----

Gerard had been talking with Lisa all night. I had woken up early and shuffled down the hall to stretch my legs and kill some time, expecting the rest of the ship to be sleeping, but Gerard’s cabin was illuminated by candlelight, the yellow-tinged glow spilling out under the door, and the quiet murmur of voices and stifled laughter echoing in the worn wood of the walls.

I thought it would be best not to disturb them; I was sure they would have a great number of tales to tell each other and would need a lot of time to catch up with each other’s lives. I wondered what it would be like to have to relay my entire life to someone in a story. Life wasn’t like a story to me. It was a tangle of contradicting emotions, being scared and disregarding the feeling and playing brave, and I couldn’t imagine how I could ever describe that to someone. Even less could I imagine what it would feel like to hear of all the adventures of another’s life when previously I had not even known them to be alive at all. So many possibilities would suddenly appear, possibilities of the future and the past– because all Lisa’s past was to Gerard was a story, something unknown and intangible, and he would never be able to experience it the way Lisa did.

The floor was cold, and I had not bothered to put on shoes, so I reluctantly shuffled down the corridor and up the steps onto the deck. I don’t know what I had intended to do once I had got up there– probably just aimlessly stare at the sea, or watch the black sky slowly fade to a bruised pink as the sun rose– but I didn’t make it halfway up the steps: Gerard had slipped out of his cabin and followed me. He rested his hand on my forearm, warm and smooth against the goosebumps on my skin, and I turned my head and stepped down so that we were at the same level. (I was still a step above Gerard, but alas, I was small, and hunched even smaller from the chilly morning air, so it equalled us out.)

Gerard rested his fingers on the inside of my wrist for a moment, and briefly, I could feel my own pulse under the light pressure of his touch. Then he loosened his grasp, and I linked our fingers together and kissed him. I was breathing more shallowly than I would have liked and trembling from the cold, but I ignored everything but where our skin was touching, and where I could feel the warmth of Gerard steadily exhaling when I took a moment to gasp in a breath of air. “Fuck,” I said softly, with a shaky laugh.

“Frank?” Gerard said. It was the first time he had called me anything but ‘pretty boy’ for weeks, and it was startlingly different to me. Somehow it was almost more intimate than the pet names I had grown so accustomed to him addressing me by.

I rested my forehead on his shoulder, and he ran his fingers through my hair, rubbing lightly at the skin below my ear when I shifted and burrowed into his chest. “Are we courting?” I mumbled. I was a little ashamed to ask. I felt like if we were, then I should already have known, but if we weren’t, then I would just be making a spectacular fool of myself by asking.

“Of course not,” Gerard said, and I felt myself flush red despite the sinking cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Courting is so formal, I despise the term with passion. We’re lovers, my darling.”

I squirmed and prodded Gerard in the shoulder for embarrassing me, feigning irritation, but when he ducked his head down to kiss me again I gave up the pretence and found myself smiling. Gerard could see my expression despite how ridiculously close our faces were, to my mortification, and he smiled roguishly, and promptly brought our mouths together.

When I broke away, Gerard’s eyes looked watery, and he was trembling a little. “Thank you,” he said, in the most honest voice I’d ever heard him use. “Fuck, thank you.”

“For what?” I asked.

Gerard held my waist and dipped his head to kiss me again. His hands were still shaking when he pulled back briefly to press his lips to my cheek. “For bringing my sister back,” he said quietly. “Even if she’s not exactly the same as she used to be.” His voice was wavering too, and he looked tremendously unsteady– almost as if he was going to cry. I didn’t comment when he grasped for my shoulder and missed, then proceeded to bury his face in my neck instead. I continued to not comment as he tugged me with him to his bunk, where Lisa was lying, half asleep.

“Lisa,” Gerard mumbled, poking at her shoulder, then starting to prod at her face when she didn’t respond.

“What,” Lisa grumbled. It wasn’t a question, more of a begrudging signal to fuck off.

“Lisa, this is Frank–”

Lisa waved her hand unceremoniously. “Your lover,” she said, without opening her eyes. “I know.”

“Ah, of course. I left the door open.” He seemed completely unbothered by that fact, so I pretended to be as well. (Honestly, I was fairly mortified.) “Frank, I’m going to need to borrow your bunk,” Gerard said as he quietly closed the door to his cabin, leaving Lisa asleep inside.

I furrowed my brow, and Gerard fidgeted, waiting for me to move so he could reach my bunk down the corridor. “Can’t I sleep in it as well? There’s definitely enough space–”

“No.”

“Yes, there is, you fuck.”

“I like to stretch out.”

I huffed. “You can do that with me there, you cretin. I don’t exactly take up the whole bed.”

“This is the stupidest argument we’ve ever had, just get out the way, and–” Gerard struggled to push me out of his path, but I refused to budge. “Let me past!”

“Why’re you so scared to sleep in the same bed as me, huh?” I teased.

“Christ, Frank, I’m not scared. What do you take me for?”

My face twisted into a smile. “You’re scared.”

“C’mon, Frank–”

I stepped closer to him, still not letting up, and watched his face turn red as I crowded him against the wall. “Scared?” I asked in a low voice.

The line of Gerard’s throat shifted as he swallowed, the pale skin of his neck flushing pink to match his cheeks. “Yes.”

I dropped my arms, aware of the change in focus, and let him lean on me in place of the wooden wall of the hallway. He didn’t try to push past me.

Silent words lingered in the air. I knew he couldn’t bring himself to speak his thoughts, and I wasn’t going to ask it of him– although a quiet part of me did like seeing him as vulnerable as this, with his face pink and his hands shaking. I held his hands in mine and stilled their trembling, and brought his knuckles to my lips to kiss them. Gerard opened his mouth a little in a feeble attempt to speak, but he failed again, and swiped his tongue against his dry lips before pressing his mouth shut and locking his words inside.

“It’s alright, love,” I said quietly, looking up to meet his eyes. “I know.”

Gerard nodded feebly, and pressed his nose into my neck. He was cold. I was acutely aware of how warm I was.

I ran my fingers through his hair, and let him walk with me to my bunk. “I know,” I said softly.

\----

After spending some time in content companionship with the Aurora, the Freighter collectively made a decision for the two ships to remain near to one another throughout all of our travels in the near future. Lisa was still taking Gerard’s bunk, and Gerard was still sleeping in mine, most of the time with me, but sometimes not– I was beginning to take to spending my nights awake, watching the stars, and thinking. I didn’t have very much to think about, but I made myself more conscious of everything that crossed my mind, and I strung out every good thought that came to mind. It was a somewhat calming process.

When we made port a week or so later, I was fairly accustomed to returning to my bunk to find Gerard in it, and having to persuade him to let me in there as well, so when I retired to bed to find my bunk empty, although it was a bit of a relief to be able to go to bed without having a tedious little debate first, my thoughts were taken up with where Gerard could have gone.

Several days later, Gerard was still missing and I was starting to get fairly worried, but the captain made nothing of it, and neither did Mikey, so I supposed that should have been of some reassurance to me. I couldn’t stop thinking about what he could be doing out in the village though. Surely there was nothing so important to prompt him to waste his money on accommodation in the town when he could just stay here. Unless he was dealing with somebody who he didn’t want to know of his connections to the Freighter and the Aurora. Oh, fuck.

My worries were almost confirmed– when I had visited the town I had seen a man that looked suspiciously like the captain of the Hangmen, and I had brushed it off as trickery of the light. Now I knew it was most likely not something my mind had conjured up, but more probably just as disastrous as my mind had made it seem when it was a worry.

It was no longer a worry. The thought had gained a lot more gravity than that. It was a fear, now.

When Gerard returned, his mind was shut off and sheltered, and he scarcely spoke to anyone save for Lisa for the rest of the day. And when the two of them talked, there was something off about it. I couldn’t work out what was different, but there was something there, something behind the casual smiles that Gerard flashed at anyone who walked past him and Lisa as they shuffled down the corridors that wasn’t normal.

I tried not to think about it. I tried to divert my mind to the good thoughts– Gerard had his brother- sister- now, and he felt like he could confide in her. As much as I wanted the person he was confiding in to be me, I knew I should be happy. I mean, I was indirectly the reason that Lisa was there at all. Or perhaps even directly the reason. Yes, that made me feel quite a bit better. And I trusted Lisa. I was sure that if something bad was happening she would tell me.

\----

Lisa rested her chin in her hands, and leaned forward across the table. Her painted lips twisted into a grimace, and her carefully shaped eyebrows fell as she sighed. “It’s the Hangmen,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “Fuck.”

“Yes, rather. Fuck.”

\----

Gerard was acting the way Ryan had been acting before he killed himself. This was not a coincidence. Mother Mary.

I sat on my heels, mindlessly polishing daggers from the weapons chest. Gerard paced up and down behind me. “I didn’t seek them out, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said.

“You could have just left,” I told him. “Turned around, and walked away. Would it have really been that hard?”

“I bumped into them, very literally, Frank. I don’t think they would have let me just walk away.”

“You didn’t need to tell them all of our secrets,” I hissed.

“They weren’t secrets. Christ.” Gerard scrubbed at his face with the heels of his hands. “They just wanted to know where you were from, and if you were the first kid I’d plucked from a room with a balcony. Nothing remotely incriminating.”

I dropped the dagger I’d been cleaning, and a metallic clatter echoed off the wooden floor. “You don’t know how they might use that information,” I growled. “Why did you tell them, Gerard?”

“Because,” he snapped. “Because I wanted to know the truth about Ryan. I knew he couldn’t have sold us out for money.”

I raised an eyebrow. “So it wasn’t for money?”

Gerard glared at me. “I hoped it wouldn’t be. It was.”

“So you’ve gone and given a detailed biography of me to the people who want to kill us.”

“They don’t want to kill us, they just want to use you to get to Parade Fountain.”

I groaned. “Doesn’t it only work once?”

“They don’t know that.”

“You know you’ve just made this whole situation a hundred times worse.”

Gerard sighed. “Yes. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

I gathered up the shining daggers laid out on the floor in front of me and dropped them in the chest. “You’re never thinking straight.”

Gerard caught the side of my arm when I went to leave. “Please, Frank.”

I huffed. “Please what?”

“Forgive me. Please.”

My anger didn’t hold. I petted Gerard’s hair. “You fucker. Always.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (this isn't finished yet, it's still in the works and i'll update it when i can.)

**Author's Note:**

> this is a wip. i update more often on wattpad but i try to keep posting regularly on here!


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